Mesozoic Effect
by joestej
Summary: Millions of years ago, the Earth was ruled not by man, but by the fearsome creatures known as DINOSAURS! Now Earth's only hope for the future may lay in the secrets of its ancient past. Let the galaxy tremble, for our world's most ancient masters have finally returned. The Council is going to have a fit...
1. Chapter 1

_This is...an interesting story. It came about through a discussion with one of my reviewers, where we decided that a race of super-intelligent dinosaurs with space ships would be insanely awesome. Things kinda snowballed from there. _

_Though I am going to try to be at least a little scientifically accurate when it comes to this story, please remember it's about TALKING DINOSAURS. Science left the building a little while ago, and took the kids with it. We're officially in crack fic territory now! Well, a little bit of crack, anyway. The plot and characters will be (somewhat) serious, but the concept definitely isn't. So kick back, relax, and get ready for a story about prehistoric monsters fighting aliens IN SPACE!_

* * *

**Approx. 250,000,000 BC (Triassic Period):** Reptilian mega-fauna known as 'dinosaurs' first evolve. Though not biologically related, pop culture would eventually add other aquatic and aerial mega-fauna to the 'dinosaur' category.

**Approx. 245,000,000 BC:** First dinosaurs show signs of sentience, and settle into many varied city-states throughout the world.

**Approx. 200,000,000 BC (Beginning of Jurassic Period): **Dinosaur civilization enters its Golden Age, spanning the entire world and producing revolutionary breakthroughs in engineering, biology, and advanced physics. Synthetic meat, advanced agriculture, and population control measures remove the need for conflict, and the dinosaur civilization enters a period of peace that lasts for over 150 million years and becomes known as the Pax Saurus. Dinosaur astronomers discover first signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

**Approx. 200,000,000 BC:** Dinosaur astronomer Caltex first discovers an alien race of machines known to the dinosaurs as Architeuthis. The Architeuthis are observed visiting and wiping out all other extraterrestrial signals, and historical signals indicate that this is a repetitive cycle that repeats every 50,000 years. Now advanced enough to attract the attention of Architeuthis and fearful of discovery, the dinosaurs retire their own space exploration efforts. They erect a series of signal dampeners around the planet, hiding their presence from the rest of the galaxy. Dinosaur technological development begins to slow, eventually stagnating.

**Approx. 65,000,000 BC (End of Cretaceous Period): **A rogue Archieuthis enters the system, penetrating the dampeners around the planet. Having anticipated this event, billions of dinosaurs retreat to hidden shelters hidden deep underground. As they do so, several genetic viruses are released, stimulating the evolution of Earth's mammals. While the Archieuthis destroys all traces of their civilization, the dinosaurs enter cryogenic stasis, waiting for mammals to evolve and release them.

**2124 AD: **A human survey team stumbles across one of the stasis chambers located under Dinosaur Provincial Park, Canada. Automated systems awaken the dinosaurs, initiating first contact between the two species. Though the humans are understandably terrified, the obvious intelligence and peaceful intentions of the dinosaurs prevent hostilities. The dinosaur stasis chamber and its newly awakened occupants are declared an international scientific resource of immeasurable value, placing interaction and study off limits for all but a few intellectual elites.

**2125 AD: **Though the language barriers are difficult to overcome, after months of work technical specialists from both groups are finally able to create a translation program. Full communication is finally possible between humans and dinosaurs. The dinosaurs relate their story to mankind, as well as the location of the other buried stasis chambers. The UN immediately classifies all stasis locations to prevent nationalist looting, and Task Force Phoenix is created to secure and excavate all stasis sites.

**2126 AD: **The last stasis chamber is opened. The influx of dinosaurs captures the popular imagination. Though the sudden appearance of so many massive creatures causes great economic and ecological concern, dinosaurs are swiftly able to work with several large corporations to create synthetic meat and bio-engineered super crops, preventing serious damage.

**2127 AD: **Facing serious housing issues, Project Lindenbrock begins. Project Lindenbrock is an international project to create hundreds of geofronts in Asia, Africa, and North America. These geofronts would allow dinosaurs to live in comfort without overcrowding native wildlife.

**2128 AD:** The UN announces the planned geofronts are to be donated to the dinosaurs, so that they can create their own sovereign nation. The dinosaurs accept the offer, but continue to share their knowledge and technology freely.

**2129 AD:** A devastating terrorist attack destroys one of the geofronts, killing thousands of humans and dinosaurs. Local warlords and criminals begin raiding geofront construction around the world, stealing valuable resources and advanced technology. As dinosaurs have not constructed weapons in several hundred million years, Task Force Phoenix is reconstituted to protect the geofronts and help train the dinosaurs to defend themselves after millions of years of pacifism.

**2135 AD: **Advanced dinosaur technology officially ends world hunger. Dinosaur medical technology has also eradicated most diseases. Attention begins to return to the original Archieuthis attack, and possible solutions to the problem.

**2137 AD: **The first permanent research base is constructed on Luna. Plans for large orbital colonies to help house the growing human and dinosaur populations are drafted. Construction begins on Javelin 1, a manned space craft to explore Mars.

**2139 AD:** Javelin 1 launches with a crew of both humans and dinosaurs. It reaches Mars later that year, and advanced dinosaur sensors detect strange readings from the planet's south pole. The ship lands and discovers a cache of advanced Prothean technology. Though the scientific community is still reeling over the possibilities of the Mass Effect, another discovery is made. Using advanced dating technology, the survey team is able to estimate when it was abandoned and come up with an approximate timeline for the Archieuthis Exterminations. The timeline reveals that another extermination is due in less than 200 years.

**2140 AD: **Faced with an imminent threat, the people of Earth unite as one. Putting national conflicts aside, loose articles of confederation are drawn up and signed by all of Earth's nations. The Pangea Alliance is born. Design work begins on new interstellar vessels that will utilize mass effect technology. Task Force Phoenix is reorganized into the military arm of the Pangea Alliance.

**2141 AD: **Comet Alpha, the Pangea Alliance's first FTL vessel, launches. Following data recovered from the Protean archive, it discovers the Mass Relay in orbit around Pluto. Comet Alpha excavates the relay and uses it to travel to the Arcturus system.

**2142 AD: **Construction begins on a large naval yard, hidden in deep space several light years from Sol. The facility is jokingly codenamed "The Hatchery". At the same time, Comet class exploration ships begin surveying the Relay network and plans are made for orbital defenses around Sol and Arcturus.

**2144 AD: ** Retathrx, a renowned dinosaur physicist, creates the quantum scanner, allowing objects to be studied at the subatomic level and deeper. Structural analysis of the Arcturus relay with this device reveals that the relay could not possibly be Prothean in origin. Fearing the Relays are Archieuthis constructions, all exploration fleets are recalled.

**2145 AD:** The first warship is launched from the Hatchery, the Tyrant class battleship _Star King_. One kilometer long and three kilometers wide, the _Star King_ is armed with six dreadnought class mass accelerator cannons, but its primary armament is the K-PG launcher, which fires kinetic kill missiles at FTL speeds.

**2148 AD:** Continued construction combined with limits on exploration drain the Pangea Alliance's element zero reserves. Relay exploration missions resume in an attempt to locate more element zero.

**2150 AD: ** Using quantum scanners, scientists are able to create the first synthetic element zero. This synthetic element zero, also called syntho, breaks down three times as fast as natural element zero, but can be easily mass produced. Relay exploration is slowed but not halted as a period of widespread colonization begins.

**2151 AD: **The first human and dinosaur biotics are born. Blame is placed on the widespread use of syntho, but quantum analysis of afflicted infants reveals that the biotics are benign in nature. Design begins on biotic amplifiers to help the new biotics harness their abilities when they mature. The first Meteor class exploration ships are launched, which begin phasing out the aging Comet class.

**2157 AD:** Comet Alpha, the only Comet class exploration ship still in service, is destroyed by a Turian patrol while trying to activate Relay 314. The First Contact War begins.


	2. Chapter 2

"Signal's locked and clear. It's definitely a relay, Ma'am."

"That's good. It took us long enough to get here, I'd hate for us to have spent all that time chasing a particle echo," stated Captain Dredoic, swishing her massive spiked tail casually. "Bring us in, Emily. Nice and easy, no need to push the old girl."

Zackary Jackson glanced across the massive bridge to where their navigator sat, holo-helm blocking her face as she slowly began steering the old scout ship toward the dormant relay. Though he'd heard a lot of sailors jeer at the vessel's ancient appearance, their scorn only lasted until they saw her nameplate. Comet Alpha was a legend, and rightfully so.

Dredoic had been Alpha's captain for almost a decade now, and the huge Stegosaurus had more than earned the privilege. There wasn't a single thing that happened on her ship that she didn't know about, and the elderly dinosaur probably knew as much about their different jobs as her officers did.

With a wave of one foreleg, she summoned a holographic interface on the floor before her and tapped an icon to display the growing image of the new relay on the main screen. The smart metal of her command couch automatically shifted to continue supporting her heavy bulk even as her long neck stretched forward to admire their distant prize.

"Course plotted, Captain," Emily announced, her voice echoing around her helmet. "We should hit the relay in just a few minutes."

"Excellent. That's ten for the old girl," Dredoic said, spinal plates flexing with obvious pride. "The perfect end to her final mission, wouldn't you agree?"

"Damn straight, Ma'am!" chirped Alpha's executive officer, a small dinosaur named Telci. The tiny creature barely came up to Zackary's knee, and as usual sounded like a drill sergeant on helium. "Should we report this in to Command, or wait until we've activated the relay?"

"Wait, I think. The relay isn't going anywhere, so there's no rush."

Zackary leaned back in his chair and glanced over the floating datafeeds from the ship's antiquated sensor arrays. Though they'd been updated twice since she first launched a decade and a half ago, Comet Alpha's sensors were still antiquated in comparison to what the new Meteors had. He decided he preferred Alpha's sensors anyway. The new ones were too easy. These actually made him work for a living. Speaking of which…

"Captain, I'm getting some kind of motion ghost out there," he called, examining the scrolling datafeed from the ship's long range sensors. "It's probably nothing, but I'd like to send out a sensor ping just to be safe."

"Ping away," she answered, swinging head around to glance over his shoulder. "It's not like there's anyone here to see us anyway."

With a quick keystroke, he triggered the pulse and glanced over to wait for the results. They didn't take long, and almost instantly several red alerts began to flash in front of his face.

"Ma'am, I'm getting artificial contacts. At least a dozen of them!"

"Kid, you better be messing with me," Telci piped, skittering across the floor to bounce upward in a biotic leap. The small feathery dinosaur came to rest on Zackary's shoulder, and his narrow head swiftly bobbed up and down as he inspected the feeds himself. "Well, shit. It's a live one alright. Probes maybe? We are in the ass-end of nowhere, after all."

"Can't be, they're too big and moving way too fast." Zackary did some calculations in his head, comparing them to what he knew of their current heading. "Captain, they're on an intercept course! At this rate, they'll be in communication range in just a few minutes!"

"I guess we can chalk up another first for the old girl," Dredoic said with a resigned sigh. Zackary could understand why. When it came to aliens, there were a few million years' worth of guilt dinosaurs had work through, and it obviously still weighed on them. "Michael, look alive on the comm, and somebody break out that first contact package. We'll be needing it. Emily, hold our course unless I say otherwise. We don't' want to spook them."

"Looks like they just passed into Alpha's passive sensor range," Zackary reported. "I've got a visual."

"On screen then. Let's get a look at our new friends."

The massive display screen that took up the bridge's forward wall flicked instantly to a live feed of over a dozen alien vessels. They were swept, angular creations, with predatory lines and layered wings that spread out like feathery crests. Most were smaller escorts, a little over two hundred meters long, that clustered in groups of three or four around a trio of larger ships. These were at least five hundred meters long, a little over half the length of the new Void Claw cruisers coming out of the Hatchery, but much broader and thicker than a Void Claw ever would be.

"Heh. Well, as a Raptor, I can at least approve of their design aesthetic," commented Telci. "Cruiser and frigate analogs, I'd say."

"They've definitely got mass effect barriers up, and strong ones to boot," Zackary said, looking through the sensor data. "Unless they're a lot more advanced than we are, those have to be warships. You don't put shields like these on civilian transports."

"The length definitely suggests spinal weaponry," agreed the Stegosaurus, drumming her armored tail against the deck as she often did when she became thoughtful. "How do you think they'll stack up with our ships?"

"Impossible to tell without an active scan," he replied. "They're in range, if you want me to give it a go."

"Please do. It's a First Contact, I doubt they'll mind us being a bit curious about what makes them tick."

"Aye aye, ma'am. Starting scan."

Almost instantly, his datafeeds began lighting up with new information. Though Quantum Scanning was only possible at extremely close range, the Alliance had some fantastically powerful long range sensors as well. Even with her aging equipment, Comet Alpha could run a full planetary scan in under an hour. The alien ships were a cakewalk next to that.

"Definitely warships, Captain. I'm seeing spinal guns, laser point defense, some nasty-looking baffled armor, and-Shit!"

He didn't need his sensor feeds to see what was going on now. The frigates on the screen darted forward like arrows from a bow while the cruisers began rapidly turning, shifting from their intercept course to point their main guns directly at the helpless exploration vessel.

"Emergency evasion!" Dredoic bellowed instantly, and Zackary felt his stomach lurch as Emily threw the ship into a wide roll. "Get us out of here! Full power to barriers and everyone brace for impact!"

A second later, the entire world caved in.

.

.

.

Zackary awoke with ringing in his ears and blood in his eyes. He was incredibly dizzy, and he felt weightless. Despite that, it somehow seemed like he was moving, jerking backward every few seconds. As he reached up to clear his eyes, he realized he actually was moving. Something was pulling him by his collar, swearing the whole way.

"Damn monkey. Couldn't have bioengineered the mammals some damn armor plates, no! Enhanced cerebral function my feathery ass…"

Wiping the blood from his face, he looked over his shoulder to see Telci's fanged muzzle two centimeters from his eye.

"Done napping, are we?" the tiny Compsognathus asked, tilting its head in accusation. The weightlessness instantly vanished as Telci dispersed the biotics he had been using to help drag Zackary's body. "If you feel up to it you might want to move, boy. We've got maybe two minutes before this whole ship's a fireball."

His vision still swimming, he complied, rising to his feet and following the small dinosaur down the corridor. Things were obviously bad. The red emergency lights were on, and the hallway was cluttered with debris. The walls had buckled and cracked, and the ceiling had completely collapsed in several places. The mass effect fields were the only thing holding the air in at this point.

"Sir, what the hell happened?" he asked, ducking under a bit of wreckage. "We scanned then, and then they just started shooting!"

"Can't say for sure, but it was probably the scan that did it," Telci called back. "This ship has some powerful scanners, and they ain't built for subtle. The aliens probably figured the only reason we'd be hitting them with something that strong would be if we were trying to lock on for an attack. And as it turns out, the bastards have damn good aim. First shot ripped the whole ship in half."

"What?!"

"You're surprised?" he asked, scampering over a mound of electrical scraps. "We're an exploration vessel. This thing was never supposed to be hit by anything bigger than some space rocks. Structural fields are holding, but not for long. Captain set the self-destruct to go off as soon as they fail, so we need to move."

"Where is she? Did she make it out?"

Telci stopped, lowering his head sadly.

"When we got hit, most of the bridge caved in. She was able to get to you in time, but…she got stuck under the debris. I wanted to stay and help, but the stubborn bitch ordered me to take you and get out."

"We have to go back for her!" Zackary exclaimed, but the small dinosaur grabbed his ankle before he could take another step.

"And do what, kid? I saw how much crap fell on her. If she wasn't an Armor, she'd be dead right now. Even if we could somehow dig her out, she can't walk. We'd never make it to an escape pod in time." The feathered dinosaur frowned, and started leading the way forward again. "This is the only way, and she knew it. Now move, or I'll start dragging you again."

"…did anyone else make it?" he asked, stumbling along behind the nimble dinosaur. The gravity appeared to be weakening, which wasn't a good sign. They didn't have much time.

"Not from the bridge. It was bad. The captain tried, but between the overloads and the collapse, you were the only one she could save." He stopped talked, darting forward a few steps before halting again. "I couldn't save anyone."

"Telci, it wasn't your fault. No one could have-"

"I know. But it still doesn't make me feel any better." He cocked his head in a bird-like motion and nodded. "Got it. That pod's still in one piece. Move your ass, mammal boy!"

Zackary staggered drunkenly into the pod, even as Telci hopped onto a nearby terminal to close the door. The dim glow went away, replaced by clean white light. The pod didn't really feel like a pod at all. It was nothing but a small hallway that ran parallel to the main corridor. The far wall was filled with empty tubes, some small, some human-sized, and a few large enough that even Dredoic could have squeezed into them. He was somewhat alarmed to note that every single tube was empty.

"Shouldn't we wait? Maybe more people will come," he asked, even as his companion began programming in the pod's launch sequence.

"Alpha always had more escape pods than she needed, kid. Can't expect a big ass Rex to smash its way from one end of the ship to the other because one of the pods was out," the feathery dinosaur explained quickly. "Since the bridge's pods were scrapped, we had to take the long way round. Between me dragging you and you tripping like a drunk on every bit of rubble you could find, we're probably the last ones leaving. Anyone else still on this boat…isn't in any condition to come with."

The pod lurched as it threw itself away from the doomed remains of Comet Alpha, and Telci jumped back down to the ground.

"The good news is the cryotubes are working fine. We should last for the next few thousand years, at least. Plenty of time for the Alliance to pick our asses back up. If we get frozen fast enough, those aliens probably won't even be able to find any life signs."

"Do you think they'll be able to follow our trail?" Zackary asked, sliding into a nearby human-sized pod.

"Too early to tell, kid. We were pretty far out, but Alpha's a messy old girl. We also got out a burst transmission right after they hit us, and they might be able to track that too. Still, our last stop was Shanxi, and General Williams is stationed there. If they want to pull this crap on his colony, they're welcome to try."

The lights in the pod began to blink out one by one as the cryogentic tubes sealed themselves. A holographic screen appeared in front of Zackary's face, giving him a final chance to abort the sequence or communicate with the pod's only other occupant.

"…they are going to find us, right? We won't really be stuck in here for centuries?"

"Relax, kid. The pod will start sending out a distress call in about a week, as soon as it confirms there are no hostiles in the area. You'll wake up in a month with a nasty headache and some scaly vixen stabbing a needle into your hairy ass. Promise."

"Thanks, Telci."

"Heh. Stick with me, mammal. Everything's gonna be just fine."

* * *

**Codex: Dinosaur Categories**

Due to the thousands of species that survived the fall of dinosaur civilization, exact categorization of dinosaurs by species usually proves impractical. Instead, humanity has placed dinosaurs into eight broad groups based on their physical attributes.

The first and most iconic dinosaur type is the Rex, consisting of large Theropods. This category includes dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Spinosaurus, and Carnotaurus. In battle, Rexes are typically used as tank killers, and are given battle harnesses featuring large forward firing anti-tank cannons on each flank. Rexes also frequently use large omniblades on their heads or feet that allow them to engage armored vehicles in close combat.

The second type is the Raptors, consisting of smaller Theropods. Included are species like Deinonychus, Velociraptor, and Ornithomimus. Raptors that chose to join the Alliance's ground forces are typically used as infantry and commandos, and are armed with harnesses featuring forward-firing anti-personnel weapons on each flank. They are also often given magnetic mines and other weapons for use against vehicles.

The third type is the Thunderers, which includes all Sauropods. Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus are all Thunderers. Thunderers have a variety of combat roles, but usually serve as mobile command or artillery platforms. Because their large size makes them vulnerable to air strikes, many are equipped with sensor and thermal camouflage nets to help hide their profiles.

The fourth type is the Armors, including all dinosaurs with bony protrusions equally located across their bodies. Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus are both Armors. Normally, Armors are equipped with thick armor and strong barriers, as well as tail or turret mounted heavy anti-personnel weapons. They function as large anti-infantry units.

The fifth type is the Shield, dinosaurs with large bony heads. It includes creatures like Triceratops, Styracosaurus, and Protoceratops. Shield species that enlist in the military are equipped with large, forward-facing deployable barriers, and are often also given a high-caliber back-mounted turret as well. Shields function as infantry support units.

The sixth type is the Walker, consisting largely of Hadrosaurids. This category includes Parasaurolophus, Edmontosaurus, and Corythosaurus, among others. Like Thunderers, Walkers can serve a wide range of combat functions, but are most commonly seen in support or anti-vehicle roles. Walkers function best in large groups, and have been known to charge in massive stampedes as a crude form of psychological warfare.

The seventh type is the Soarer, including all flying 'dinosaurs' (actual flying reptiles are not technically dinosaurs) like Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, and Quetzalcoatlus. In battle, Soarers typically function as aerial renascence (for smaller breeds) and air-to-ground hunter-killer operations (for larger species). To support this, Soarers are equipped with jet thrusters and special armor to allow them to survive such increased speed. Recon Soarers are equipped with cloaks and powerful sensor equipment, while Hunter-Killers are equipped with rockets, bombs, or chest-mounted ventral turrets.

The eighth and final type is the Swimmer, which covers all swimming 'dinosaurs' like Ichthyosaurs, Elasmosaurus, and Plesiosaurus. Though they do serve an anti-ship role in times of war, most interstellar nations do not maintain wet navies. As such, Swimmers usually function in reconnaissance or artillery roles.


	3. Chapter 3

Commodore Novina Cartius, commander of the 92nd Patrol Flotilla, sighed as she watched over her bustling crew from the command platform. She'd been in a bad mood ever since the disaster at Relay 314, and the sensor feeds coming from the distant alien world before them were just making it worse.

As she'd feared, it seemed the vessel they'd destroyed had been nothing more than a first or second generation exploration vehicle. They'd tracked its final transmission and primitive drive emissions to this system, which was almost completely dead. No signals, no in-system traffic. The only signs of life were a handful of small satellites around the fourth planet. They were obviously dealing with either a very primitive race that lucked into a major Prothean ruin, or the first colonization attempts of a race just starting to expand into the stars.

The craft they'd met was likely one of their most advanced exploration vehicles, based off the power of its sensors compared to the level of development she could see in this backwater. And she'd gone and blown it up. Command had vindicated her decision to fire on the ship, as there was no way Novina could have known the alien ship's armor was too weak to survive her warning shot. No Turian ship that large would ever be so flimsy, scout or no.

The logic still didn't ease her guilt. At least they'd been able to recover all the strange vessel's escape pods, that would probably help smooth things over with these aliens. And what strange creatures they were: covered in hair, but with features that reminded her uncomfortably of an Asari with light-brown skin instead of their usual blue. They also seemed to have a strange attachment to their pets, as almost half the inhabitants of the pods had been strange reptilian or avian animals, also locked in protective stasis. They had to have some kind of cultural or religious significance, as the escape pods were obviously designed specifically to accommodate the animals, and some of them were much too big to be practical for an interstellar voyage.

The stasis chambers were another bizarre technological quirk. The exploration ship had been flimsy and primitive, but the chambers were beyond even their most sophisticated medical technology. Her medical staff had unanimously agreed that trying to open them without a much more in-depth study would most likely be fatal for their occupants, so she had ordered them left alone. There was enough innocent blood on her hands already. The aliens could open the pods themselves once contact was established.

"Commodore, I'm getting some anomalous signals from the planet's upper atmosphere," announced Ensign Dexinea Salvinis from her station to Novina's left. "It almost looks like…ECM of some kind. It's very strong."

"That doesn't make sense. If you filled the upper atmosphere with ECM like that, it would jam almost any long-range communication method more advanced than basic cable connectors," said Novina, her brow furrowing. "Any signal would be completely blocked before…before it could go anywhere."

Her mind raced. The signal from that explorer beat them here by several days. If their long range sensors were as powerful as their short range ones, it was certainly plausible they'd be able to spot her ships long before they arrived. Combine that with the jamming field and advanced technology in their escape pods, and it painted an entirely different picture of these hairy aliens. A very dangerous picture.

"All ships, Red Alert!" she ordered, flipping on the automatic harness that would tether her to her post. "We've been had. Go to combat formation and bring up our barriers, but make sure our spinal guns are pointed away from the planet."

"Ma'am, I must protest. Regulations state that when encountering an unknown alien species, always assume hostility," reminded Seter Agamus, her Second. "I can connect the dots as well as you. If these aliens are as advanced as they could be, we may not get the time to maneuver back to an offensive vector."

"We assumed hostility before, and all we did was scrap a defenseless explorer. I'm not making the same mistake twice," Novina answered. "Any change in the planet?"

"Nothing from the planet, but the satellites have begun shifting. Some kind of low-power thruster. They're moving to stay on the same side of the planet we are."

"Defenses then," Seter reasoned. "Sensor profile?"

"They mostly just look like large tubes, sir. Likely high-yield missile launchers. Looks like they fire one missile per satellite."

Novina breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how powerful their payloads, their GARDIANS could probably take the missiles out before they got close. Unless they had some kind of advanced propulsion or defense mechanism, which could be entirely possible. The best defense now was diplomacy.

"Ensign, are those defense satellites far enough from the jamming to receive signals?"

"Yes Ma'am. Should I send the Council's standard First Contact package?"

"I don't think this counts as a 'standard' First Contact. We can hardly claim to come in peace when we already blew up one of their ships," Novina reasoned. "Send them an image of one of our cruisers, then the Hierarchy's emblem. That'll do for an introduction."

"What if their software can't make sense of our image files?" asked Seter skeptically. "Or worse, what if they assume the files are some kind of viral attack?"

"Our image formats are designed to be as logical to decrypt as possible. If they have any skill with computers at all, they should be able to figure it out. As for your other concern, I'm hoping their curiosity will overwhelm their caution," she explained, ignoring her Second's contrariness. It was his job to take the opposite stance to his commander after all, to force her to examine every possible outcome before making a decision. It was an annoying regulation, but an effective one. "They can always isolate their receivers from the network if they're that worried. Ensign, send the transmission."

"Signal sent, Commodore. Still no reaction from the satellites or planet."

"Give it some time. Once they decode the messages, they still have to try and figure out a way to respond."

Novina relaxed as much her harness would allow, making sure to project a calm image for her crew. Truth be told, she would much rather have left this crap to the Asari, but her orders were clear. The new aliens were an unknown quantity, and the situation required an immediate response. Getting the Council involved now would bog things down for months while everyone argued over what to do, sentient rights groups got involved, and the media blew everything out of proportion. In Command's opinion, an imperfect response now was better than a perfect one tomorrow.

"Incoming signal from one of the satellites," Ensign Salvinis interjected. "Images, same format as the ones we sent. Virus scans check out, so I'm transferring them to your terminal."

A pair of holographic images appeared in the air before Novina's face: the ship they had destroyed, and an emblem showing a blue and green planet atop a stylized claw print. The print looked like it might have been left by one of the alien animals they had recovered. It seemed her guess was right: the creatures did have some kind of cultural significance.

"New message incoming!" Salvinis called quickly. "Video this time."

It was a crude representation of planet, with enlarged green dots where the defensive satellites were hovering. The Turian ships were shown as red triangles. A red line encircled the planet, a few hundred kilometers from where her forces were positioned. As she watched, the red triangles turned and moved across the line. The green dots pulsed, shooting tiny projectiles that struck the invading triangles and caused them to vanish in flashes of light.

"Well, I'd say the meaning of that was pretty clear," Novina commented dryly. "Contact all ships, no one crosses that line without my express orders."

"It might be a better idea to pull back even more, as a show of good faith," suggested Seter. "We're likely already inside the range of their missiles."

"Not just yet. They let us get this close, and odds are good they didn't have to. If we pull back, they might think we're trying to out-range their defenses, or are afraid of a fight. I'd rather give them nothing until we have a more reliable means of communication." Her brow furrowed again, her plates rasping against each other as she thought about what to do next. "Alright, let's send them a video of our own. Salvinis, I'm going to need your help on this."

It took them ten minutes to whip together a crude video using the same basic imagery the aliens had. It showed the red triangles encircling planets of many colors, destroying dark-colored triangles that crossed the defense lines of those planets. The triangles then grouped together and shot outward, flying to dark planets and destroying the triangles around them.

"I'm concerned that they may feel the final part is a euphemism for invasion," Seter said, surveying the simulation critically.

"We have to explain why we were in an uninhabited system. Police patrol is a concept too complex to explore right now, especially since we know nothing about their culture. But hunting bad guys is the closest thing I can think of to a universal constant," declared Novina after a moment of thought. "This is probably the best we're going to be able to do right now. Go ahead and send it."

"Message sent, Ma'am."

"So now we wait." She sighed. "Stand down all crews to Yellow Alert. This could take a while, and I think if they were going to shoot us, they'd have done it by now."

Her prediction proved true. It was a half hour before the aliens responded. When they finally did, it was with a video that made her heart sink. It showed a single green triangle leaving a green planet, traveling a short distance to a dark icon shaped like a relay. When the triangle reached it, the relay lit up and shot the triangle far away. The video zoomed out, showing many such triangles leaving the original planet, activating more relays and expanding exponentially outward.

"Damn it. There goes our one chance to resolve this peacefully." Novina swore, drawing several incredulous stares from the rest of the bridge. She didn't care. This was practically the worst thing the aliens could have sent.

"They don't know that activating new Relays is forbidden, or why it's so dangerous. Command would understand not sticking to the letter of the law here," pointed out Seter. "We already ignored the regulations once. We can overlook them again."

"Not about this we can't. That ship we found was headed straight for the relay when we intercepted it. They obviously know how to find relays even when they're dormant, and who knows how many other explorers they have out looking for them?" she asked rhetorically. "That ship didn't have enough armor to take a single shot from a cruiser. What are they going to when they find a race like the Rachni, or even just some unscrupulous slavers?"

"With respect, it sounds a lot like you're suggesting we conquer these people for their own good. I sincerely hope you understand how hypocritical and immoral something like that would be."

"I'm not suggesting anything like that at all! That would be insane!" exclaimed Novia, appalled. "Look, if we leave this to the diplomats, the aliens might think the law about relays is something we made up to limit other races' expansion. It could take years of diplomacy before we can convince them how dangerous activating relays like this really is. By that point, who knows what they might unleash?"

"I fail to see how starting a war would convince them that we aren't trying to limit their expansion."

"It will if we do it right. Their defense satellites are unmanned. We destroy them, then throw a few rocks at the uninhabited portions of the planet. Once we have orbital supremacy the aliens will have to surrender, but before they do they'll probably try to signal for rescue. When their relief fleet gets here, we'll be ready for them with a team of Council negotiators and the entire 4th fleet. The Hierarchy will probably get a slap on the wrist for attacking without provocation, but the situation will be resolved, and no one will get hurt."

"You realize this is going to fall almost entirely on you and Admiral Sancion. You'll almost certainly lose your command, and Sancion will likely have to retire in disgrace for promoting you." Seter gave her a level stare. "These aliens may not fully trust the Hierarchy for decades. History will remember you as a thug too incompetent to know the difference between the letter of the law and its spirit."

"If the aliens need a monster to show them how dangerous reckless exploration can be, better it be us than someone even worse. If we were a Krogan fleet, that colony would have been glass hours ago. They can hate us for as long as they want, so long as they're still alive to do it," she replied firmly. "That is what's important. Everything else is irrelevant. The first part of duty is sacrifice, and if my reputation and the career of one admiral is what it costs to protect an entire race then I'd call that a bargain. Sancion knew that when he promoted me. He'll understand."

"In that case, I think I speak for the entire crew when I say this." He came to attention and saluted crisply. "It's been an honor to serve with you, Commodore."

"They haven't taken the flotilla away from me just yet, Seter. We still have to pull this off first," she said grimly, glancing down at the tactical display. "Since we have no idea what those satellites can do, I want to try and take them out all at once if we can. Considering how powerful their sensors are, they'll probably detect any attempts we make to target them directly."

"If we can't lock onto them, how do you propose we destroy them then?"

"With math," Novia replied, her mandibles spreading smugly. "As long as they're holding the same orbital path as we are, our ships won't need a lock to hit them. We can calculate the firing angles manually. As fragile as they are, our broadside guns should be enough to destroy them, or at least shove them far enough off trajectory that they won't be able to fire right away."

"The odds of bringing down all the satellites in the first salvo is very low," he warned, leaning over to survey the display himself. "The motion of our respective orbits and the limited arc of the broadsides will make mathematical targeting quite complex."

"It's still a better plan then using automatic targeting and praying their weapons are something we can block or intercept," countered Novia. "We'll lock on for the second salvo, but right now I think the element of surprise would give us more of an advantage then the reliability of a solid lock."

"I agree," Seter said, gesturing to bring up the course data for the defense satellites. "Let's get started then. If I might suggest, you may want the frigates standing by to engage as soon as we fire. If we're lucky, they'll be able to take out any satellites the cruisers miss. Even if they can't bring them down before the aliens return fire, having some more GARDIANS between us and those launchers might be a good idea, just to be safe."

"Same here. Now, let's get started."

The calculations took almost fifteen minutes and the assistance of four gunnery specialists from several different ships, but eventually everyone involved concluded that these were the best odds they were going to get. Any more delays would either ruin the numbers they already calculated or tip off the aliens that something was amiss. Novia took a deep breath, ignored the pangs of conscious in her gut, and gave the order.

"All ships, open fire! Frigates, break off and deploy for close engagement!"

The results were immediate. In the span of ten seconds, five of the planet's seven defensive satellites were smashed to pieces, their barriers proving no match for the powerful Turian guns. The satellites had almost no armor, and the surprise attack left them no chance to dodge. It was a slaughter.

But as she had feared, their calculations hadn't been perfect. The final two satellites suffered only glancing blows, their shields deflecting the shots harmlessly way. With the initial surprise now exhausted, they responded instantly. They began darting and whirling in crazed evasive patterns, obviously trying to keep out of the line of fire.

It was distressingly effective, Novia noted. They had obviously been programmed to avoid bombardment from mass drivers at range. At this close distance, their broadsides and spinal guns would never be able to keep up with the satellites' darting movements. Until her cruisers got close enough to use their GARDIANS, the frigates would be the only things that could touch them.

Then, without warning, one of her ships vanished. One moment, the _Vigil Aeternam_ was flying normally of their port bow, the next its icon disappeared with a small red alert indicating its destruction.

"What the hell…" she muttered, pulled up the video feed for the fallen cruiser. Then she gasped.

The ship had been torn completely in two by some enormous impact. Part of its midsection was actually GONE, vaporized by whatever had hit it. She reversed the video, but there was still no clue about what had struck the cruiser. One second, it was fine. Then there was a flash, and the ship was nothing but floating debris. The tactical display chimed, and another cruiser's icon winked out as it too was annihilated by this unknown weapon.

"Damn it!" she cursed. "All ships, full evasion!"

The deck lurched beneath her as her helmsman began twisting the cruiser into a slow roll, but she ignored it. The frigates had closed with the last satellites, and without their agility or barriers to aid them both were destroyed almost instantly by the Turian lasers. Not even slowing, the frigates swooped away in perfect unison, following her order to take evasive action.

For a moment, no one on the bridge moved as the flotilla's surviving ships continued their strange dance. There was no way to know if those explosions were caused by the satellites, by sabotage, or by some terrestrial weapon. A minute ticked by, then two. Finally, Novia let out a heavy sigh.

"All ships, stand down to yellow alert. Assume blockade formation around the planet," she ordered heavily. "Now, will someone tell me what just happened to our cruisers?"

"No idea," Ensign Salvinis answered quickly. "The missile ports on the satellites opened when they started taking evasive action. There was a flash of light from the Beta satellite just before the first ship exploded, and another from the Alpha when the second ship was hit. They definitely did something, but…"

"But?"

"Based off the position of the satellites in relation to their targets, it almost looks like they fired a kinetic weapon of some kind," she said. "The damage pattern is also consistent with impacts at extreme velocity."

"How extreme?"

"Ninety percent of C, at least," stated Salvinis. "But that can't be it. No weapon that small could fire anything that fast. Even the biggest dreadnoughts can't even manage two percent of lightspeed, much less ninety!"

"What if it wasn't a gun?" Seter mused, pulling up an image of one of the satellites, its large missile tube gaping open. "What if you put a miniaturized eezo core on a missile?"

"Element zero cores have built-in safeties to prevent impacts at FTL speeds," Novia answered dismissively.

"But this wasn't faster than light, was it?" he pointed out. "No one's ever done it because the cost of a missile that can go at even a fraction of lightspeed is insanely high. You could almost buy a frigate for the price of a single shot. But in theory, it could be done."

"Spirits…" Novia said, staring at the image of the planet below. "What kind of people build dreadnought-buster satellites for colony defense?"

"Jamming is clearing up!" Salvinis reported suddenly. "Looks like the ECM was coming from those defense sats after all. Scanning… Ma'am, you're gonna need to see this."

"Now what?" she moaned, and the planet's image changed, highlighting sixteen different areas, each well over twenty miles in diameter.

"Geofronts," Seter whispered in awe.

"There's no surface construction at all," confirmed Salvinis. "It's all in those geofronts. They're all at least two kilometers deep, and sensors are picking up heavy armor around all of them."

"I guess we don't need to bother trying to scare them into submission with an orbital bombardment. Nothing short of a dreadnought would even be able to touch those. Damn it all!" Novia spat darkly. "So much for a short, bloodless conflict. Alright. Contact the 5th Fleet. Tell them what happened, and that we'll need assistance for a ground invasion. For better or worse, we're going to have to see this through. Second, you have the deck."

With a heavy sigh, she unclipped herself from her command post and started walking toward the elevator to her cabin.

"I'm sorry," said Seter as the doors opened to let her in.

"Yeah." The doors closed, leaving Commodore Novia alone in the small elevator. "So am I."


	4. Chapter 4

_Sorry for the wait, but I suspect you'll find it was worth it. :) I should probably warn you that the violence in this chapter is going to push the edges of the Teen rating this story is listed as, because DINOSAUR CARNAGE. There aren't guts hanging out or anything, but it does get a bit messy at points. Anyway, enjoy! The next chapter should return us to the Human point of view for the exciting conclusion of the Siege of Shanxi._

* * *

"General Arterius! My troops are honored to receive you."

"Skip the formalities, Tribune," stated Desolas, walking briskly off the prefabricated shuttle pad as his shuttle roared back into the sky behind him. "I'm here because I heard you were having some trouble pushing deeper into the alien complex."

"I'm afraid so, General," agreed the tribune, falling into step behind Desolas as the general began stalking though their hastily erected basecamp. They'd only been on planet three days, but the Hierarchy didn't waste time. Dropships had placed the first structures almost as soon as the landing site had been marked secure, and their engineers had quickly turned the small camp around the entrance to the alien geofront into a fortress of rectangular bunkers and sloped fortifications.

"What are all these birds doing here?" asked Desolas as they walked, gesturing at the small, winged lizard creatures that had taken to roosting around the camp or sunning themselves on top of the Turian buildings.

"Local wildlife. They're completely tame. Vehicles don't bother them, and gunfire barely even makes them jump. Preliminary intel suggested these aliens think their animals are sacred, so I gave orders to leave them alone if they aren't causing harm."

"Well done, Tribune. No need to antagonize them more than we have to at this stage," Desolas agreed, turning to face the tunnel leading down to the alien geofront. Two large breastworks, complete with turrets, had been erected a dozen meters from the tunnel, and a burning APC had been dragged just to the side of the entrance. The mouth of tunnel had apparently featured defensive turrets and heavy blast doors at one point, but the Turian gunships and breaching charges appeared to have made swift work of them. "Now. I want a full report on the situation."

"Didn't they brief you on the way down, sir?" asked the tribune, cocking her head to the side in confusion.

"Yes, but I want to know what you know." Desolas clicked his mandibles in disapproval. "What Orbital thinks is happening on the ground and what's actually going on aren't always the same thing. Tell me everything, and start at the beginning."

"Understood. The first wave made landfall three days ago, with heavy fighter and orbital support. Casualties were extremely light, almost no anti-air defenses to speak of. All geofront entrances were reported secure within three hours of the drop, no ground resistance beyond automated defenses. Once the entrances were secure, we were given the all clear to breech the doors and run some preliminary recon on the tunnels. We cracked the doors and sent in some drones to take a look. That's when things started to go wrong."

"What do you mean, wrong?" The general flexed a mandible and gestured for her to continue.

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"The tunnels are damn deathtraps, sir. The drones were picked off by snipers seconds after they got through the doors. The aliens then fired three cluster rockets that detonated just outside the entrance and put two of my best engineers into surgery. I deployed counter-snipers, but the tunnel goes straight on for over half a kilometer and their snipers were firing from gunports in the far wall. I lost four men just keeping the damn things suppressed. We started moving in with a cabal to provide barrier support while the engineers checked for traps, and it's a damn good thing we did. The tunnel is mined to hell. Murder holes, laser trip wires, motion sensors…it took us an hour just to move fifty meters. That's when we started seeing active resistance."

"What kind?"

"Sally ports in the walls. They waited until they were inside the barrier and then jumped us with shotguns. They went for our biotics first, and once the barrier was down turrets started popping out of the walls and ceiling. Flamers and cluster rocket launchers mostly, but some heavy machineguns as well. As soon as the turrets came out their infantry fell back, and a second door slammed down behind them so we couldn't pursue. That's when I called for backup."

"Yes, I remember. That didn't end well, did it?"

"No sir. The aliens had obviously been hiding their air defenses when we first dropped. They deployed them when the second wave came in," explained the tribune gravely. "Micromissile swarms and light laser emplacements. We'd already marked the airspace as secure, so the pilots were caught completely with their pants down. They took out almost a third of our dropships before we smashed the AA positions with orbital strikes."

"Very well," Desolas nodded, his expression an unreadable mask. "When did the aliens start fielding their war beasts?"

"It was a few hours after the second wave got hit, actually. When the dropships got jumped, I decided that trying to send more men in wasn't going to work," she answered, her tone professional. "Since they were trying to cut off our reinforcements, it seemed like they were more interested in stalling us into a protracted siege. So I sent in a Hastati medium tank, with the gun and drive train rigged to remote control. It made it halfway down the tunnel before the mines did enough damage to take out its treads. Once they had immobilized it, something in an infiltrator cloak finished it off with magnetic charges. But it proved they didn't have any automated antitank weapons, or they'd have used them before we cleared out so many of their defenses. Once I knew that, I sent in three APCs, supported by automated heavy weapon platforms. They responded by deploying the war beasts."

"Rather effective, for animals," noted the general dryly, eying the burning wreck of the APC.

"Extremely, sir. We think they have some kind of VI controls imbedded in their skulls, because they're way smarter than any animal has a right to be. The horned ones were the first type we met. They've got big barrier generators built into their armor, and some kind of anti-armor turret mounted on their backs. The barriers overlap and reinforce each other. Our APCs never had a chance, but they got far enough that we could send in antitank teams and squads with disrupter ammo, using the dead tanks as cover. They weren't expecting that. We forced them back, but that's when we found out the tunnel doesn't just lead to an elevator like we thought. It turns. I ran some seismic tests, and it's a damn labyrinth down there. Cul-de-sacs, zig-zags… It's worse than the wargames we ran through the old Rachni dens back in Basic."

"Besides the horned creatures, have you seen any other animals?"

"A few. They've got some big ones with crude hands and head crests, we're calling them Grabbers. Not much armor, but they can carry big-ass antitank guns, missile pods, or other weird stuff on dorsal or side mounts. About six hours ago we ran into a third type hiding behind a dropwall. A little shorter than you are tall, but nine meters long and covered in armor. The thing even had some kind of deployable tech shields and an omni-mace on its tail." The tribune shivered slightly at the memory. "It took out two fire teams before we could bring up anything that could scratch it. Then it popped smoke from some launchers on its sides and made a break for it. Would have made it too, but the engineers were using advanced sensors by that point. We were able to bring it down with an antimaterial rifle shot to the head before it could get out of our line of sight. The aliens didn't like that much. They hit us with a counter-offensive that shoved us back a hundred meters. I had to send in two more tanks to stop it. Thank the Spirits these tunnels are so huge, or we'd really be in trouble."

"I see," remarked Desolas. "Tell me Tribune, does anything about this seem odd to you?"

"Actually sir, it does."

"Oh? And what do you think is strange?"

"Their defenses don't make any sense," she said calmly. "The maze is perfectly set up to force a battle of attrition, and since there are no elevators it makes sense they'd need the tunnels to be so massive just to support normal traffic and construction. But they didn't have any anti-armor defenses in place. There aren't any tank-traps or antitank mines. They don't seem to be prepared for tech abilities either. They've got a lot of cluster munitions, flame weapons, even some nasty tricks to use against biotic barriers, but they don't have any kind of counter for normal shields. No disrupter ammo, no overload or sabotage mines. If they did, we wouldn't have gotten half as far as we have. It's like they were expecting to be attacked, but not by us."

"Go on."

"These tunnels represent a lot of investment, and they'd be perfect against massed waves of light targets, or against heavy targets with only limited long range capacity. Their anti-armor weapons are highly mobile and incredibly accurate, but they can't take what they dish out. Same for their sniper rifles. Most of them are built for rapid fire, not for heavy impact."

"And what does that tell you?"

"I think they weren't expecting vehicles at all, sir," said the tribune decisively. "Maybe it has something to do with their war beasts, but their defenses look like some of the stuff the Council built in the Rachni Wars. They're designed to repel huge waves of cannon fodder while picking off the handful of bigger targets with mobile heavy weapons. I'd say that's just how their species usually handles war, but they're actually being very conservative with their men. We haven't seen any wave attacks at all. So I think they've probably fought an interstellar war before, against someone like the Rachni. Maybe against the Rachni, if these people are old enough."

"Excellent," stated Desolas, unclipping his rifle and walking toward the tunnel entrance. "You may not be aware, Tribune, but this tunnel has the highest casualty rate of the entire invasion. If you had told me that the only thing you'd learned in all this time was that the enemy was using animals instead of vehicles, I was prepared to relive you of your command for incompetence."

"Actually sir, I thought that was why you were coming down yourself," she replied in a measured voice, unfolding her own weapon and following along. She gestured, prompting a squad of guards to assume position around them. The general didn't even react. "If I may ask, what changed your mind?"

"The fact that you've actually been analyzing the enemy instead of just throwing more men into the meat grinder. Too many commanders these days think that just because we have the numbers to absorb losses that massed assaults are an acceptable tactic. They aren't. It's wasteful and I won't tolerate a butcher under my command. Your men have taken the highest casualties, but they've also made more progress than any other group. Right now, they're the only ones still moving forward. Everyone else has gotten bogged down or started building fortifications inside the tunnels for a siege."

"That is what the regulations suggest for tunnel warfare," she admitted as the group wove their way around the shattered remains of another tank.

"The regulations are guidelines. Knowing which ones to use and at which time is what separates a good field commander from an idiot rotting his career away on garrison duty," Desolas said with a shrug. "I don't give a damn about the manual. I want results, and right now you appear to be the only one getting any."

They walked in silence for a while, rubble and metallic shards crunching under their boots. The walls were obviously made of thick metal, and were covered in burn marks where the Turian proton rounds had hit them. They were also studded with deep pinpricks that Desolas couldn't place. He gestured, and the others around him stopped moving. Walking over to the wall, he placed one gauntleted hand over a cluster of impact sites, judging their depth.

"Tungston rounds?" he asked simply.

"Close. We haven't been able to do a full analysis, but the techs say that some of their ammo contains high traces of compressed osmium and iridium," she answered from behind him. "Don't ask me how that's possible. Compressing stuff that dense is supposed to be like compressing diamond. Either way, they said a rifle firing one of these could go straight through an unshielded trooper and kill the guy standing behind him."

"Did they now?" remarked the general with interest.

"It's actually saved a lot of lives. The bullets go straight through without stopping, instead of bouncing or splintering inside the armor. Keeps the medics busy though."

"I suspect that you'll find that's the reason they're using them," stated Desolas. "As you said, they don't want to stop us. They want to stall us. A dead soldier can be left behind. A wounded one has to be pulled out and cared for. What other tricks do these aliens have for us, I wonder?"

"Actually, I can show you another one right now, General."

The tribune led the way to where one of the huge alien war beasts had fallen. It was a monstrous creature, clad in rounded armor with a wide boney frill that expanded from the base of its skull and three gleaming horns that jutted out from the front of its head. When it was alive it must have stood at least three meters tall, and from horns to tail was over eight and a half meters long. The head alone was longer than Desolas was tall. Two round, bulky generators were mounted on the animal's flanks, and the mounting for a large turret rested on its back. The cause of the great beast's death was obvious: an antitank rocket had come up under its armored skull and taken it straight in the throat. It had probably been killed instantly.

"We're calling these ones Tridents, for the horns," she explained, then pointed several meters away, where the creature's turret lay in pieces. "I had the engineers pull it off and dissect it so we could get a better idea of what we were up against. You won't believe what these things use for heat sinks."

He approached and saw instantly what she meant. The turret was an ordinary design, with a single large cannon supported by a heavy machinegun. The armor around the weapons had been peeled away, revealing that neither weapon mounted any sort of built-in cooling device at all. A single cylindrical rod rested where the heat sinks should have been. The rod was one of many, mounted in a revolving drum that had been pulled open to show its contents.

"I'm not sure I understand," he admitted, crouching down and staring at the strange device.

"I didn't at first either. These rod things are detachable thermal clips," she said, tapping one with a finger. "Think of them like disposable heat sinks. Instead of overheating, the gun just dumps the clip and slides a new one in."

"Clever. With a setup like that, the rate of fire on these guns would be immense," remarked the general. "It's somewhat shortsighted, though. The thermal clips would have to be removed and traded for new ones, just like old ammunition based weapons."

"They actually thought of that, sir. Take a look at the drum itself."

He did as instructed, and found that the sides were coated with a strange gel. A large pool of the goo had formed around the turret, and a very thin layer of frost covered the floor several centimeters around it.

"When we cracked this open for the first time, we nearly got flash frozen. As near as the techs can figure, that gel is what's left of an ultracooled superfluid with a temperature that was pretty close to absolute zero. It's basically the same kind of stuff we use in our Snowblind rounds. The drum had internal mass effect fields that kept the fluid from damaging the weapon or the thermal clips and kept it at those low temperatures." She pulled out her omnitool and pressed a button, causing the mangled turret to groan and the thermal clips to begin rotating, ejecting and inserting themselves in a clicking rhythm. "Our best guess is that the used clips eject and cycle through the superfluid, which flash cools them so they can be used again. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to just build a ton of disposable ones instead of rechargeable ones like these, but I'm going to assume these aliens are of the opinion that cost isn't really an object."

"And what would make you say that, Tribune?" Desolas asked, climbing back to his feet and gesturing for their escorts to lead them further through the complex.

"Just a feeling, sir," she said, ducking under a set of dangling wires that had once been a turret of some type. "This is a lot of effort to go through just to make a huge deathtrap. If they'd really wanted to, they could have just blown the tunnels and sat tight until relief showed up to dig them out."

"An interesting theory," remarked the general. "And if they collapsed these entrances, how would the aliens feed themselves, or keep from simply asphyxiating?"

"No idea, sir. Probably the same way they were doing it before we showed up."

"Care to elaborate, Tribune?"

The tunnel ahead narrowed abruptly where an alien door had been jammed open halfway by a sapper team. The group closed ranks to carefully thread their way through it, and turned the corner into the next part of the tunnels.

"The air's easy. A couple of dreadnought sized O2 scrubbers hooked to a fusion generator could keep a geofront like this going almost forever if it had to. As for food…" She sighed. "I checked the terrain on the ride way down, sir. No farms, no roads, no nothing. The only things above ground are a bunch of trees and those birds. I don't know if they're importing it and it's just really well preserved, or if they've got a freaking mushroom garden or something, but I do know that however they get food, they don't grow it on the surface."

"You continue to impress me, Tribune. It took Orbital three scans and a team of intelligence analysts to come to the same conclusion you did by looking out a window."

"They've got a lot to keep track of, sir. I took a lucky guess. Intel doesn't have the luxury of guessing." An armored truck sped up behind them, and she flagged it down. "We can ride in from here. It's a long walk on foot, and there's no sense in wasting a transport."

"Agreed." Desolas climbed in the back with the rest of their unit and sat down on the floor of the vehicle. The tribune took the space across from him and banged on the hull once they were all situated. The driver took off again, weaving quickly and carefully around the scattered debris. Leaning forward, the general put his hands together and realized they were covered in blood.

The entire truck was, actually. Spots of it speckled the rear windows of the vehicle, and it pooled in the crevices of the vehicle's bed. Looking carefully, he could easily spot the small channels where it ran out the back of the truck.

"Medical transport?" he asked, cocking his head.

"Yes sir. Our usual ones are those APCs with the bright blue paint and the turrets pulled off. Blue stands out down here, and without any treaties to protect our medical transports I figured anonymity would be a better defense than armor."

"And an unarmed truck is much less likely to be mistaken for a combat vehicle, I suppose?"

"That too sir. I've been having our people set up the triage stations a bit further back though, just in case."

"Very well. How have you been dealing with enemy wounded?" Desolas asked as the truck slowed to swerve around the wreck of a tank. This one was still on fire, and if he listened he could hear gunfire in the distance. They must be getting close now.

"We haven't, sir. They don't leave them for us to grab," she explained. "Once one of them goes down, they close ranks and won't give an inch. They'll charge us to get some breathing room, but they never give ground if one of their soldiers is wounded. Same goes for their animals. No one left behind."

"There is a sentiment I can certainly agree with. How do they evacuate the wounded?"

"No idea. Standard procedure for them seems to be pop smoke, throw up energy barriers, or obscure our vision in some other way when they're pulling out wounded." The tribune paused thoughtfully. "I think they've got the same concerns on that score that we do: they don't want us shooting at whatever is hauling their injured. We've found some of their triage stations, but they're always abandoned by the time we get to them."

"Interesting. If they don't want us shooting their wounded either, we might be able to come to some form of informal agreement," the general mused. "Then again, maybe not. What about their dead?"

"They're less picky about those. They'll take them if we give them enough time to do it, but normally they just strip their gear and throw incendiaries to cremate the bodies on the spot. They do the same thing for the animals, but those are harder to burn. As you saw upstairs, we got a few they couldn't destroy in time. I've denied medical permission to run autopsies, since we're operating under the idea that they've got some special significance. Cutting up the body of a sacred animal would look very bad for us when things settle down."

"They can't be that sacred if they're using them as living weapons," Desolas replied as the truck ground to a halt. The triage station was the same as all the others he'd seen throughout his career, so he didn't bother looking around. But as he started to stand, the tribune grabbed his wrist.

"Hold still," she said, wetting her hands in the blood that pooled around their feet. She carelessly smeared it across his chest, completely blotting out the small emblem that signified his rank. "Their snipers have good eyes, and they figured out our rank insignias after the first day. We're on IFF ranks only now."

They stepped off the truck, just as several medics began loading stretchers full of wounded onto it. Their injuries were much as she'd described: clusters of neat holes punched straight through their armor, or horrific burns that engulfed whole sections of their bodies.

"Got too close to a Grabber," volunteered one medic as the general stopped to examine one solder's injuries. Most of her limbs were horribly broken, and her chest was partially caved in from some kind of massive impact. "It body-slammed her into a wall and stomped her twice before they could drive it off with flamers."

"You're using flame weapons?" Desolas asked, letting the tribune lead him onward.

"The aliens seem to like the idea. I figured we'd give it a shot as well," she replied, yelling over the sound of gunfire from ahead. "In these close quarters, they're damn effective against infantry. It takes focused fire to take out one of the war beasts, and the Tridents are pretty much immune. Their armor is too thick."

A massive barricade loomed ahead of them, one of the modular fortifications used to protect temporary camps. It wasn't quite large enough to block the entire corridor, and a small gap along the left side presumably let soldiers slip in and out of the barricade. Several holes the size of his head had been punched in the artificial wall and hastily patched, and the area where a turret would usually be mounted was a scorched crater. Several fire teams manned the parapet, firing blindly over the top to keep the enemy suppressed. The entire structure was bolted to the fronts of two tractors, the type normally used for hauling out dead or disabled tanks.

"A mobile rampart," he stated, mandibles widening in a grin. "Clever."

"Not clever enough," she replied, motioning him to take cover with her against the right side of the tunnel as a series of missiles smashed against the armor of the barricade. "They closed one of their doors just enough to jam it in place. The gap around the wall is too small for vehicles and we can't disassemble it under fire. We've got to go forward on foot, and they've been ripping us to bits every time we've tried it."

"I assume you've tried siege shields?" asked the general, nodding at the large pile of the things. They were the standard issue model, made of heavy, thick metal with a digital periscope and small opening for soldiers to fire one-handed weapons like pistols or tech powers through. These were noticeably covered in black scorches and the blue smears of blood.

"They just hit us with grenades or antitank weapons, or snipe at our feet," answered the tribune. "The shields just aren't thick enough and don't cover enough surface area."

"Heh. In that case, let me show you a trick I picked up from the Asari. Get me a cabal of biotics, some magnetic charges, as many antitank weapons as you can find, and a few tons of armor plate. I think it's time we got this invasion moving again."

.

.

.

"General, I strongly protest."

"Noted, Tribune," he said, flexing his arms to test out the combat exoskeleton in his suit. "Remember, the heavy war beasts are your primary target. If I find myself face to face with one of those Tridents, I'm going to be very upset."

"…understood, sir. We'll do our best."

Desolas could literally feel her frown of disapproval as she took two squads and climbed the rear of the barricade, making sure to keep out of sight. He smirked as a shot from one of the alien cannons tore through the barricade a meter from his head. Bless those alien bastards, he hadn't felt this alive in years!

"You know the plan. Do your part, and I'll make sure the drinks are on those Fleet bastards sitting high and dry up there," he announced, walking past the group he had hand-picked for this assignment and taking his place. "Screw up, and we'll be blue smears on the floor. So. Are you ready?"

"Sir, yes sir!" his men shouted in unison. They were quite eager, which was good considering this was a very unconventional tactic. Most soldiers got jittery when their commanders started making up the rules.

"Alright then, you spiky faced bastards! What the hell are you waiting for?!" he roared, gripping his handholds and pulling with a surge of bionic muscle. "Let's go live forever!"

The soldiers beside him, similarly enhanced with their own exoskeletons, heaved at their own grips. Behind him, the cabal began glowing with the fire of biotics as they dropped the mass of the strange partition he'd had their engineers build.

It a massive wall, seven meters wide and three tall, crafted from every spare bit of armor and metal they could find. Plates from fallen alien war beasts, the side from a shredded tank, even strips torn from the wall of the tunnel itself. It was ten centimeters thick at its very thinnest, and probably weighed several dozen tons. But as the biotics began lifting it, Desolas felt it become as light as a feather in the grasp of his enhanced armor, and their massive shield easily began to move.

"Now, slide!" he ordered, and they scraped the new barricade to left until it slammed into the far wall with a crash. "Pivot!"

Working in perfect unison, they swung the wall of armor back like it was on a hinge, making sure to keep the end nearest to the enemy flush with the tunnel wall. As they moved, Desolas' arms suddenly felt the surge of several impacts, and he knew the enemy had taken notice of their new trick. With almost no mass of its own, even the pricks of handheld weapons felt like hammer blows. As the first missiles started to hit, they were forced to brace the wall with their shoulders just to keep it from toppling on top of them.

"You're clear!" yelled the voice of the tribune from somewhere above them, and he grimaced. Now for the hard part.

"This is it! Heave!" he snarled, digging his feet into the floor. Against the hail of enemy fire, it was like trying to shove through a hailstorm, but his squad refused to quit. A shell smashed through their shield a few meters away, ripping off most of one trooper's arm. She didn't even pause, screaming through the pain and spinning to push against the wall with her good side.

The far end of their wall finally cleared the original barricade, and Desolas could see the men on the wall were throwing everything they had at the aliens in an attempt to give them some more cover. They were using a fire brigade system, blasting with their rifles on full auto until they overheated, and then dropping the useless gun to scoop up a new one while the old cooled. A rocket sailed over his head to smash into what sounded like some kind of barrier or shield on the other side of his makeshift fortification, and it was quickly followed by three more. A crackle like lightning sounded from the alien side of the wall, suggesting that his engineers had started trying to overload whatever defensive screen the enemy was using with tech mines.

"Pivot!" he ordered again as they reached the point he'd scouted out earlier. It was close enough to the main fortification to still benefit from the cover it provided, but far enough up to give them another foothold to work with. Under his direction, they swung the new wall back outward until it blocked a descent section of the tunnel again, now slanted just enough to keep the first barricade's exit covered. "Right. Now drop it and brace!"

The wall's mass returned with a crash as the cabal stopped lifting. They darted forward, lending their strength to the soldiers pressed against the huge shield. Their assistance almost immediately justified when a monstrous bellow sounded from the other side of the partition and what felt like a pair of runaway trains smashed themselves into the barricade. Even with its huge weight and the enhanced soldiers behind it, the armored wall began to slid and slowly waver, starting to topple backward.

A split second later, the magnetic charges Desolas had ordered placed on the far side of the wall detonated. He'd had them secured with the magnets facing outward, and he suspected the poor war beasts hadn't even had time to realize what the strange things clinging to them were before the mines want off. They were shaped antitank charges, so it was no surprise that the pressure against the wall stopped instantly when they detonated. With that many explosives clinging to them, the strange creatures' skulls would have been pulped instantly.

Behind them, teams of engineers began running up, welding struts and supports in place with omnigel. The tribune came with them, breathing hard and with a narrow new channel along the side of her helmet where an armor-piercing round had kissed it.

"Permission to speak freely?" she panted, sticking her gun around the side of the barrier and firing blindly. When it overheated, she pulled it back and shoved another soldier into place to man the gap.

"Granted."

"That was the most recklessly inspiring thing I've ever seen. Why the hell did you insist on leading the damn charge yourself?"

"Because this has been a nasty fight, and it's going to get worse before it gets better," he answered. "They need to see us on the front. If you do your job right, your men will throw themselves at the gates of hell without a second thought just to keep you from beating them to it."

"Grenade!" someone yelled suddenly as a trio of small shapes arced over the top of the wall. They bounced once before all three were snagged in the blue glow of biotics and anchored to the ground. They exploded a second later, the blasts safely contained inside the barriers they had been encased in.

"Centurion," announced the general loudly, nodding toward where the cabal was regrouping. "Just for that, I'm going to make sure you and the rest of your cabal won't be able to pay for a single drink within a hundred light years of our next port."

The troops around him cheered, and the tribune beside him nodded knowingly. Relations between the normal units and the Hierarchy's few biotics were often frosty, which made combined arms operations difficult. Crediting the cabal for the rescue would go a long way toward encouraging both sides to work together in future. Everyone certainly needed all the help they could get.

"Sir, with respect, I'm going to have to ask you to fall back behind the rear fortification now," she pronounced as another canon round blew through wall and turned one of their engineers into a bloody smear. "We need to plan our next move, and the visibility is shit up here."

"Agreed. Taking this ground does us no good if we can't keep moving," granted the general, before turning to the growing number of soldiers huddled behind the makeshift fortification. "You lot have your orders, and you don't need us coddling you. Get to it. Remember, you're Turians, not damn Salarians. They'll see our backs when we're dead, and not a second before."

Another cheer went up, and he was able to slip away with a wave of medics that were carting out the dead and wounded members of his team. Instead of moving to the forward command post the tribune had obviously been using before his arrival, he climbed the ladder leading to the parapet of their old barricade. She climbed up behind him seconds later, her gaze obviously disapproving even through the opaque visor.

"They're putting up a good fight still," he pronounced, looking over the alien defensive line. "I'd have thought they'd have fallen back a bit to negate the advantage we gained."

"It's what they usually do," the tribune agreed, unfolding a sniper rifle from her back and surveying the enemy line. "But it looks like they're sending in reenforcements instead. Another infantry squad with two Grabbers for support. Dull white armor, and I don't recognize the pods they've got mounted on their sides."

"I've got them," stated a bulky trooper a little ways down the wall, pulling out a missile launcher and aiming carefully.

"Go for the rear one first, in the legs. We'll get the lead Grabber when it turns to run, then we can finish off the other one."

"No, hold your fire," ordered Desolas suddenly, grabbing the rifle out of the tribune's startled hands and sighting down at the enemy line.

As he watched, one of the white-armored creatures bent down and scooped up a fallen alien in its oversized hands. The pod on its right side split open and a small stretcher slid out. The huge creature placed the injured alien on the stretcher with surprising care and dexterity and it immediately retracted, taking the alien with it. The beast then moved to where another armored alien had fallen, and began repeating the process.

"I think we just found how they've been evacuating their wounded," he pronounced, handing the rifle back so she could observe what the creatures were doing. "Spread the word. No shooting at anything wearing those medical pods, and tell our medics to start painting their armor white. They can turn the hazard lights on their tech armor back on too."

"I don't think I follow, sir. The standard color for medical units is blue, not white."

"Well, the aliens seem to prefer white. We may not be able to talk to them, but I've no doubt that if their snipers have figured out what our ranks mean, they've seen our medics as well," he explained. "The first step in convincing these people to surrender is to show that we would even accept their surrender. Highlighting our medics shows that our race doesn't shoot at medical personnel, and establishes that mercy will be shown to those incapable of resisting. We need them to know that we aren't going to exterminate them if we win."

"I understand," she said, then sighed as she looked down at her weapon. "Next time though, could you just use your binoculars? I spent two days calibrating this damn gun."

"Really? Didn't take you for a sniper," Desolas said, crouching behind the parapet as a rain of bullets ripped their way through the air above his head.

"Why not? With this I can survey the enemy, issue orders, and fight at the same time," replied the tribune, her voice slightly strained as the shots continued to rattle off their cover. "Still, I'm surprised you were so lenient about the enemy wounded. I would think the logical choice would be to try and increase pressure against their carriers. The fact that they always hold position while their injured are recovered is the best way we have of forcing them into unfavorable terrain and inflicting some serious damage."

"Now you sound like my little brother," the general remarked with a shake of his head. "The kid just got out of Basic, and he's still got that strict military mindset. 'Annihilate them all and let the Asari sort it out.' That's fine for grunts or operatives who just have to worry about shooting stuff. But if you want to be a leader, you've got to learn to look at the bigger picture. Using their wounded to pin them down works in the short term, but in the long term it's going to bite us in the ass."

"I agree. It's too much long-term damage for not enough short-term gain. But I didn't know you had a brother, sir."

"I do. He's a real prodigy, apparently. He'll go places, if I can convince him to get rid of all this ends-justify-the-means bullshit before he does something spectacularly stupid," explained Desolas fondly. "How about you? Any family in the service?"

"None serving right now. My husband's in C-Sec though," answered the tribune, peaking over the top of the wall and almost getting her head blown off for her trouble. "Damn! They're getting better at that... Anyway, we have two kids, a boy and a girl, and they're with him on the Citadel. If we live, I'll show you pictures."

"Good call on waiting. Family pictures are bullet magnets," he agreed, and glanced back the way they had come with a heavy sigh. "There's going to be a lot of parents and siblings who aren't coming home after this one, I think."

He sighed again and was about to climb down when sudden movement caught his eye. Almost twenty meters away, one of the walls had slid open without a sound. It was remarkable. The door had been completely hidden when he'd first seen it, without even a seam to give it away, and it had obviously evaded the sensors the techs were using to detect hidden traps as well. These thoughts died instantly as he saw the shimmering shapes that started pouring from the opening.

"Infiltrators!" he warned, and began firing with barely enough time to aim. It didn't really matter. If even one shot hit, it would shatter the alien cloaks and force them to fight on even footing. Soldiers all across their makeshift defenses followed his lead, filling the air with bullets.

The aliens were closing the distance fast, bobbing and weaving with agility that seemed completely unlike their normal tall strides, but the volume of fire couldn't be overcome. One by one, their cloaks sparked and died, revealing the reason for their strange swiftness. These weren't the Asari-like bipeds they'd been fighting before. These creatures were living nightmares.

They were vaguely birdlike creatures, with forward-bending legs rather than the strange reverse-jointed Asari legs their normal infantry had. They didn't stand erect or hunch down like Krogan, but seemed to be built into a naturally low-slung hunting posture, their long tails stretching out behind them as they ran. Their arms folded inward almost like bird wings, but the gauntlets covering their long-fingered gauntlets ended in cruel talons. They were somewhat short, standing a little under a meter tall, but their long tails and predatory stance meant that they were a full three meters long. Their bodies were completely covered in thin black and gunmetal-gray armor that clung to them like a second skin, and their heads were covered with narrow, wedge-like helmets. A pair of burning red slits covered the area where their eyes should have been, and a few of their mouths had dropped open to reveal rows upon rows of hooked teeth. These weren't domesticated herbivores like the creatures they'd seen before. These were predators.

The moment their cloaks were gone, the creatures changed tactics. Their arms unfolded from the sleek running posture they'd held before and revealed gunports built into their wrists. They fired without hesitation, never slowing in their sprint toward the exposed Turians, and Desolas realized the small wrist weapons were actually submachineguns. Their tiny bullets did little damage, but as each creature blazed away with both hands, quantity started to overtake quality. Shields flared across the Turian lines and several soldiers fell instantly. The approaching creatures were still too agile to get a good bead on, and though their shields also started to blaze as the Turian shots splashed off them, they had yet to fall.

"Get back!" he ordered, firing a neat burst that dropped one of the creature's shields completely. Before he could follow up, a second beast sent a stream of bullets at him and forced him to fall prone to present a smaller target. "All units, keep your distance! They're melee fighters!"

Desolas' warning came too late. Almost the moment he spoke, small bulges along the creatures' hips and backs split open, revealing miniature jump thrusters like the ones favored by their own Armiger Legion's assault units. They fires, and the predatory animals rocketed through the air at lethal velocities, feet coming up like striking birds of prey. The general had just enough time to see glowing omni-blades unfold around the metallic talons on their feet before they began slamming into his troops, the diamond-hard blades punching through their armor to impale the hapless Turians almost instantly.

"Shotguns!" yelled the tribune beside him, dropping one of the animals instantly with a shot to the head. "Keep to cover and hit them as they land!"

It was a clever, if somewhat ruthless plan. Like her, Desolas could see that the moment the strange hunting birds were most vulnerable was the second they struck, before they could detach their omni-claws and reorient to a new target. Letting them pounce and then following up was a good strategy. But it was also flawed, as the creatures were quickly proving. Now that they had closed the distance, they didn't need to use their jump packs to attack. They were fast and agile enough to do it on their own.

His people hadn't been equipped for this sort of combat. The birds were armed specifically for close battle, while his soldiers' thick armor, designed to shrug off gunfire, was now reduced to cumbersome dead weight. Tunnel warfare almost always involved some sort of close-quarters battle, and all Turian soldiers were trained in CQC as a matter of course. But these creatures weren't just trained for melee combat. They were born for it. It was like being attacked by something out of Palaven's ancient past, a shadow of what their people might have been like a million years before they first discovered the secret of fire.

Beyond even that horrifying thought, Desolas could see the rudiments of some sort of fighting style in the creatures' movements. All the animals attacked with the same types of calculated strikes, perfectly planned for maximum damage with minimum effort. He'd never seen a non-humanoid form of martial arts, but he suspect that if he had, it would look something like this.

"Biotics, to me! On the double!" he yelled, as one of the monsters suddenly flared its jets and threw itself eight meters through the air to slam its omni-blades into the side of the barricade just below where he crouched. The blades remained as improvised footholds as the creature gripped the edge of the catwalk with one arm and raised the other to blast him with its wrist weapon.

Instinct took over as he saw the small barrel swing toward his face. He kicked reflexively with his enhanced muscles, smashing it in the face and knocking the gun wide. It fired anyway, spraying a lethal burst of shots harmlessly into the ceiling, but as he moved to kick it again the creature grabbed at his foot with one hand. He pulled back reflexively, and it used his motion and the grip on his foot to lever itself upward, sliding its clawed feet onto the metal walkway with a clang.

On its other side the tribune fired at point-blank range, but the creature's bird-like field of vision had let it anticipate the shot. It spun on the spot, smashing her into the side of the parapet with its tail, and lunged toward him again. Omniclaws blazed around its feet as it snapped one leg up to slash him with an upward kick that would likely lead to an impaling downward strike.

As fast as it was, it wasn't fast enough. In a single move, Desolas stepped inside the kick and tackled the creature to the ground. It thrashed, pulling it legs up to try and maul him with its lethal claws, but he smashed it in throat with one enhanced fist. The thin armor on its neck caved inward, and the creature's kicks suddenly lost their strength. Grabbing its head, he gave a mighty twist, breaking its neck in one smooth motion.

"You're insane," muttered the tribune as she reached down to pull him to his feet. Below, the other hunting creatures were still tearing into their soldiers. They displayed an almost unholy intelligence, darting into cover when their shields when down and flashing forward on their jets to attack heavy weapons or snipers. Several of them had still fallen, but the majority of the blood on the ground was blue, not red.

"Not really," he replied, unleashing a burst from his rifle that drove one of them away from the fire team is was in the process of mauling. "They're like birds, and they've got light armor. Makes sense that they'd be faster than they are strong. Besides, they're masters of close combat. They expect us to try and disengage, not charge."

A wave of glowing detonations that threw two of the creatures helplessly into a nearby wall announced the return of the cabal from the forward barricade, and not a moment too soon. The beasts' furious onslaught would have long-since broken the cohesion of any non-Turian unit, and if this had gone on any longer, even that would finally have failed. Their ability to work together was the only thing keeping this from turning into a slaughter, as the alien monsters certainly had no problems with teamwork. They appeared to be natural pack hunters.

"Biotics, crowd control!" he yelled over the gunfire. "Singularities and shockwaves! Negate their agility! Engineers, tech mines on the biotics!"

The birds had already noticed the incoming cabal and reacted just as he'd thought they would. Four of them instantly spun to throw themselves through the air at the biotic soldiers on their jump jets, omni-claws blazing. Just before they hit, the tech strikes he'd requested went off, tearing away their shields and dousing them with enough electricity to throw off their lethal pounces. It was all the advantage the cabal needed, and they began piling onto the creatures with glowing biotic fists and point-blank warp blasts.

A strange sound caught the general's attention, and he glanced across the battlefield to see that something new had appeared. He wasn't sure if it was a late arrival or if they simply hadn't managed to bring down its cloak at the beginning of the fight, but he knew he'd never seen this creature before. It was the same general type as the others, but where their armor was black and gray, it wore a suit of fiery orange and red. Its eye-slits glowed yellow, and instead of darting into the melee like the others did, it skulked in the background as if it was searching for something. Its gaze lifted to meet his, and Desolas realized instantly what the new creature had come for. It was here for him.

Without warning, a glowing whip of white light shot out of the creature's wrist and flashed through the air, wrapping around his wrist and blasting him with a paralyzing current of electricity. Before he could recover, it yanked on the whip, pulling him off the barricade to fly helplessly through the air. He hit the floor and bounced, armor keeping him from harm but not stopping his aimless tumble. As the room stopped spinning, he found himself staring up at the burning yellow slits of the alien beast's helm, just as its foot came up to slash downward in a swing that would likely take his head from his shoulders.

A rifle cracked, flashing through the red monster's shields and catching it in the chest before it could strike that final blow. It jumped and rolled, a second glowing whip slashing out of its other wrist to reach for where the tribune knelt on the barricade, her rifle still smoking from the shot that had saved him. The creature grabbed her around the throat and pulled, dragging her off the wall and throwing her at Desolas in the same instant movement.

They collided in a tangle of limbs, but instinct and training kicked in and seconds later both were up, weapons brandished in fighting crouches. They were just in time to see the surviving alien hunters literally vaulting their way to the top of the parapet with their jets and throwing themselves over it in boosted jumps, cloaks reengaging as they sprinted back to the safety of their own lines.

"I see now what you meant by surprises," he said, lowering his weapon warily. The adrenaline was beginning to fade, and he noticed just how much his wrist burned where the glowing whip had struck it. His legs also appeared to be covered in shallow scratches from the first creature's claws. He was going to really hurt in the morning, he was sure of it. "I'll assume those things were new?"

"Very new," she agreed. "I've never seen them before, but watching for them is going to make things even harder. This is why we think the animals have VI controllers in their brains. Even the big ones use complex tactics like that, and they can adjust to new threats instantly."

"VI control my ass," Desolas snarled, flexing his wrist. Yes, definitely broken. Damn. "Those things were sentient."

"You think we're fighting two different alien races?" asked the tribune, her voice indicating confusion.

"Not just two. I think all the creatures we've seen are sentient."

"But none of the samples we got from the captured escape pods indicated differing chemical composition in their cells, varied atmospheric preference, or evolution for various levels of gravity. Everything we've seen is supposed to have come from the same planet, and now two planets are that much alike. How could dozens of species have evolved to sentience on the same world?"

"I don't know. I just know that I surprised that first creature when I tackled it. VI don't get surprised. That red one was coming specifically for me, but it adjusted its tactics instantly when you shot at it. How did it know who I was? And if it was just a VI, why didn't it kill me instead of attacking you to save itself? Computers don't have self-preservation, and if they cared about protecting these creatures, they wouldn't send them into battle in the first place."

"Sir, if all these creatures are sentient…"

"If they're sentient, then those birds on the surface aren't birds, they're scouts. These weren't the alien equivalent of attack varren, they were commandos. The Tridents aren't beasts of burden, they're one-man heavy weapon teams. The alien animals aren't holy. They're damn people!"

"This changes everything. Spirits, we've been trying to hack them!" exclaimed the tribune. "I'll have to completely rework the assault strategies I've been using…"

"You and everyone else, I'm afraid," Desolas muttered darkly. "And this, Tribune, is why sometimes you need to lead from the front. Just a little context can change the whole battle."

He started crunching through the debris around them, resolutely not looking at the piles of bodies the strange commandos had left in their wake. His wrist burned like fire, and his head throbbed. There were still several dozen more penetration points that were even worse off than this one was. This was going to be a long day.

"I've got to get back to the Fleet and work on adjusting our overall strategy," he said finally. "Keep pushing forward and don't let up. If we can maintain the momentum, we'll be able to avoid a stalemate and maybe shove our way out of these damn tunnels. They're going to make us bleed for it, but I think that last little trap proved that they're going to make us bleed either way. Better we do it on their ground than on ours."

"Affirmative, General," replied the tribune, saluting. "We'll give them hell for you."

"Thank you," he said, turning away. "Try not to get yourself killed. You still owe me those pictures of your kids."

"You can send them to your brother when we finally get to port, General Arterius. I'm sure he'd appreciate them."

"Somehow, Tribune Vakarian, I very much doubt that. Saren can be a bit of an ass sometimes."


	5. Chapter 5

"_We can't hold out any longer! All units, fall back and regroup at Point Theta!"_

"_This is Shield Beta 3, the Spikes just slagged my generator and I'm taking heavy fire! Requesting support!"_

"_Raptor Epsilon 9 reporting. I have multiple Spike armor units closing on my position with heavy infantry support. We're out of AT charges and the turrets here are scrap. We're going to lose this position if we don't get some help here. Please advise!"_

Selic sighed heavily as she listened in on the chatter from the front. One of the benefits of being an elite Phoenix operative was unlimited access to the communication network, but right now it was more frustrating than helpful.

"Knight, this is Queen," she said into her helmet's communicator, trying to keep her mind busy while the techs around her continued their work on her armor. "Tell me you have some good news."

"_Depends on what you mean by good_," replied the Protoceratops. _"They captured the Soarers almost a day ago. A lot of them had already been shipped up to their fleet."_

"Damn it," Selic cursed. "How about the rest?"

"_We got the rest out just fine,"_ the small creature's dry voice answered. _"The Spikes used neural shock mines for the most part, and when they didn't they shot to wound. The aliens treated the wounds right away too, so I guess they can't be all bad. Those Spike medics are surprisingly skilled, considering what the eggheads are saying about their amnio acids. We've still got a few of our people who might not ever fly again without cybernetics, but almost no fatalities."_

"That goes with what Intel's been saying about them," she agreed. "These aliens have definitely encountered standard amino species before."

"_That's all I get? I just helped coordinate a global offensive against dozens of fortified positions with nothing but microraptors and other Minis. The Spikes are so pissed they've started scorching the forests for a half-click around every single one of their beachheads so we can't sneak up on them like that again. You're saying that's not worth a little 'Great job, Kerik', or 'I can't believe you pulled it off, Kerik'?"_

"We're Phoenixes. Impossible is routine, remember?" she reminded, rolling her eyes as she quoted one of her drill instructor's favorite phrases.

"_Someone should have told Bishop,"_ Kerik remarked with an unseen smirk. _"Poor Victor can't even assassinate one General. He's never going to be able to live this one down."_

"_Queen, this is King,"_ interrupted a familiar voice._ "I need a sit-rep."_

"Is that any way to speak to your wife?" Selic's lips curled into a smile. "Someone's sleeping on the couch tonight."

"_This isn't the best time for jokes, dear."_

"Sorry," she answered, and meant it. The mounting casualties and increasing direness of their situation was weighing heavily on him. Her thoughts shot to her son and the lonely egg buried with the rest of the embryos and tube fetuses over a kilometer below her feet, and she growled. If the Spikes overran the defenders, a lot more could be lost than just their lives. "Phoenix Queen reporting, General Williams. The techs are almost done with the last tweaks to my armor, and if we skip the final calibrations I can be combat ready in under a minute."

"_No need for that yet, but the Spikes in Gamma Tunnel are shoving at our last defensive line. If they break through, they've got a straight shot at the whole geofront."_

"Do you want me to support the defenders?"

"_No. When your armor's calibrated, link up with Rex Beta and stand by. Once the Spikes finally break Gamma, we're going to counter attack with everything we've got."_

"That's pretty risky."

"_I'd rather risk it all on a Hail Mary than let this fighting get into the city. If we do that, we'll have to collapse whole blocks just to dig them back out. The fleet's supposed to be here soon. We just have to hold out a little longer."_

"Rodger that. Leave the rest to me."

"_Selic. Please be careful. We've already lost too many good people today. I can't afford to lose you too."_

"I will. I promise," she agreed. "And when this is all over, we can tell little Ashley about her brave grandpa, the Hero of Shanxi."

"_Ashley? I thought they weren't going to name her until she hatched?"_

"Even if she's safe in artillery, he's assigned to Delta Tunnel, so they didn't want to go into battle without naming her. So she's going to be Ashley Williams." Selic forced a smile that was closer to a grimace, forcing back her worry for her son and daughter-in-law with a lame attempt at humor. "They'd better not die though. I'm not going to be satisfied with only one grandchild. I want a minimum of three!"

_"Three? Aren't you getting a little greedy?" _His teasing laughter was a forced as her joke, but she ignored it. Focus on the mission.

"I'm a woman with needs." She shrugged, disturbing one of the techs as he tinkered way at some kind of system in her chest. "Go lead us to victory, General. I'll bring back a Spike tank as a souvenir."

The line closed, and Selic let out another sigh. Her lead tech, easily noticeable in his holographic tech armor, walked up from the right.

"Eric," she said, carefully not moving her head as another engineer cycled through her helmet's targeting systems. "Are we ready to go?"

"Almost. We're doing the final checks right now," he answered with a nod. "How's it feel?"

"Pretty good, but lying here for so long is putting my legs to sleep. The least you bastards could have done was put a blanket down or something."

"That's our tyrant," Eric remarked with a laugh. "We've got you with your usual loadout, and the controls are synced to your cybernetics. You can still extend the triggers and fire by hand if something goes wrong there."

"Thanks," she said, watching an Iguanodon and a Parasaurolophus dragging in a fallen Ankylosaurus with their salvage rigs. Its armor had been scorched and punctured in several places, but medigel had stopped the bleeding and Human techs were already swarming over with cutting torches to peel the wounded soldier out for long-term treatment. "Anything I should know about the crap the Spikes are using?"

"Anti-tank squads are going to be your biggest worry, but this armor isn't invincible. Don't stand still and pretend you're immune to bullets. The ECM should jam their missiles, but manual shots are still possible and will hurt like crazy if they connect. Their APCs have some nasty main guns, but the suit can take at least a hit or two from them. Don't let the tanks shoot you. They're dedicated anti-armor. The first hit will crash your barriers and break your ribs. The second one will go right through you."

"Your little speeches always fill me with such confidence," she stated dryly, wincing as the armor around her legs tightened and relaxed.

"You've got enough confidence," the tech shot back. "And I've got to fix whatever you break, so remember: you're a tank HUNTER. The best defense is an overwhelming offense."

"Now that is a plan I can get behind."

Eric's omnitool began beeping, and the engineer nodded. He waved the other technicians away with a gesture, and nodded.

"The suit's all clear. Try and stand up."

Selic did as requested, climbing to her feet and stretching out her tail. In her armor, she stood four and a half meters tall, but seeing the tiny Human engineers shrink below her, she felt even taller. The muscles of her exoskeleton made the huge railguns mounted on her flanks feel as though they weighed nothing at all, and her shields crackled to life in a blue glow around her. This was the feeling she lived for. The power, the adrenaline…she felt like she could take on an army by herself. Which was good, she thought, because she might have to.

"All systems green," she announced as her HUD checked off the last of the suit's internal checks. "Thanks, guys."

"Give them hell for us, Queen," Eric yelled, before turning back to his crew. "Okay, show's over! There's a Shield in Bay Three that needs a turret replacement yesterday! Go go go, people! The Spikes aren't going to wait for you to finish your smoke breaks!"

Reminded, Selic sent a mental command as she stomped toward Rex Beta. It triggered the spindly maintenance arm built into the side of her armor, which obediently unfolded and plucked a thin cigarette from a pouch on her legs. Well, it was thin to her, but it probably would have choked a Human or a Micro. The thing was almost thick as her husband's wrist. The arm placed the cigarette in her jagged teeth, lit it with the welder built into its tip, and retracted as she inhaled deeply.

"Thank Gaia we cured cancer," she muttered, savoring the smoke as she trudged on through the empty streets. The civilians had all been pulled back to the shelters located directly under her husband's command center in the center of the Geofront, and the city itself was protected by fortified walls and turrets.

Not that something like that would make a difference to the Spikes, she reflected ruefully as she rounded a corner. She'd seen the vids of their advance. The aliens were thorough, well trained, and very well equipped. Each team moved as part of a well-oiled machine. The defenders had been able to use that against them for a while, using dinosaurs to strike unpredictably and counter the tactics the aliens had been drilled in, but now the Spikes seemed to have thrown the playbook out the window. The rigid lines and conservative advances were gone, but the aliens' discipline remained. No matter how reckless the charge, they never broke ranks, never stopped working together, and never gave up.

In the tunnels, the Alliance forces had the home-field advantage. The Spikes' superior numbers were meaningless in such close spaces and the Alliance had a host of surprises to spring on unwelcome guests. The city and its walls were also filled with nasty traps, but numbers and superior tactics would eventually tell in such open environments. For all she knew, they were just trying to punch to the bottom of the tunnels so they could throw in a fusion bomb and leave.

Of course, considering the size of the bomb located in the command center, that kind of tactic would be pretty redundant. The geofront's self-destruct charge would be powerful enough to annihilate the entire cavern and collapse all its tunnels, killing everything inside. The only thing that would be left would be the tiny stasis chamber where the unborn children slept with their cryogenically frozen caretakers. Well over four kilometers underground and surrounded by super-heated rock, they had the best protection the Pangea Alliance could devise.

It made Selic feel a little safer knowing that even if they didn't survive, their granddaught might still have a chance at life, centuries or millennia from now. Even still, she couldn't stand the thought of not getting to watch the egg hatch, to hold Ashley's scaly body in her claws for the first time. The Spikes could bring as many toy soldiers as they wanted. She'd tear apart an Architeuthis with her teeth if that was what it took to make sure that little Allosaurus was safe.

"Queen! Over here!"

Selic almost jumped. She had been so absorbed in her grim thoughts she didn't notice Rex Beta until she was almost on top of them. Spitting out the remains of her cigarette, which she'd accidentally bitten in half, she stomped over to join the Rex team's two members.

"Rex Beta, at your service," said a Tarbosaurus, nodding its narrow head to her in greeting. "I'm Jason, callsign Beta 1. Tiny over here is Celdrik, callsign Beta 2."

"Screw you, jackass," swore the team's other member, a lanky-looking Albertosaurus. "Remember, my guns are level with your crotch."

"Please. I've got balls like battleship armor. Those little peashooters you insist on calling guns wouldn't stand a chance."

"You're a dinosaur! We don't even have balls!"

"Maybe you don't, Shorty. By the time I'm done-"

Jason's taunt was cut off by an explosion in the distance. Smoke began rising from the geofront's wall, and sound of gunfire began rippling through the air. The large dinosaur looked about to say something, but Selic held up a small hand for silence, mentally triggering her communications connection again.

"_-amma Tunnel has fallen, repeat, Gamma Tunnel has fallen. All defenders, fall back to envelopment positions. Keep them contained!"_

"_Command, this is Juliet Tunnel. If we don't get some support, we're going to suffer the same fate as Gamma in a few minutes. Please advise."_

The channels were a mess again, as the Spikes continued pressing their advantage. They could feel that their objective was close now, and they were throwing everything they had at the remaining tunnels while the rest poured out of Gamma in a flood of armor. The large turrets on the city walls were already opening up, but they hadn't been designed to fight something that could hit back at long range. Two were already out of action, destroyed by multiple hits from the enemy tanks. Suddenly, the clear voice of her husband cut through the chaos like a knife.

"_Command to all units. Hold your ground and commence counter attack. Heavy Metal is authorized. Repeat, Heavy Metal is authorized. Godspeed."_

The tones of desperation and fear suddenly turned to ones of calm resolution as across the small artificial forest separating the wall and the tunnels, several dozen long necks began poking up out of the trees.

"_Juliet Lead, this is Rex Delta. We have two squads clipped on and are three minutes out. Hang in there. Help's on the way."_

"_Rex Iota reporting. We've linked up with Shield Tango and are enroute to Charlie Tunnel. Eta two minutes."_

"_All units, this is Thunderhead. As per Heavy Metal protocols, we are weapons free. Requesting targets." _

That last message got her attention. With Thunderhead's help, she could get right in the Spike's faces before they knew what was going on.

"Gamma Lead, this is Queen. I'm on my way with Rex Beta," she announced, waving for the two Rexes to follow her as she started trotting toward the tunnel entrance. "I need you to spot for Thunderhead. Keep the Spikes suppressed while we move up."

"_Rodger, Queen. Spotters, bring the rain."_

"Keep your heads below the tree line," she ordered as a tank shell whipped over their heads to blast against one of the turrets on the wall. "The leaves block thermals and work like chaff, the Spikes shouldn't be able to see through them to hit us."

Fortunately, the same thing did not apply to the defenders. Every inch of ground was tracked by laser grids and pressure sensors. The trees themselves were made of thick armor and packed with explosives. As they had to give ground, the defenders could blow them as improvised mines, simultaneously harming the enemy and depriving them of valuable cover.

"_Thunderhead, this is Spotter Kappa 3. I have fire mission."_

She couldn't see him, but from the voice the spotter sounded like a Soarer. Probably under cloak, considering the Spikes weren't trying to blow him out of the sky.

"_Spotter Kappa 3, Thunderhead. Fire mission affirmative,"_ replied the huge Cetiosaurus. Selic smiled. Her daughter-in-law was using her 'work voice' now, but out of uniform, the sixteen meter-long artillery officer was easily the most girly girl she'd ever seen. Poor Katrina even hated that her call-sign had to be Thunderhead.

"_Laser plot, target 124 by 46, radius 40, immediate suppression," _rasped the Soarer with professional efficiency._ "Target is 6 medium tanks, 4 APCs, and sixty dismounted infantry in light cover. Danger close."_

"_Laser plot 124-46, radius 40, immediate suppression. Danger close confirmed."_ There was a momentary pause in case the spotter needed to make final adjustments or cancel the mission. When no corrections came, Katrina spoke up again. _"Gamma, this is Thunderhead. We're commencing fire mission in your area. All units get to cover. The hammer's coming down."_

Across the geofront, the chatter of gunfire and crash of tank shells was suddenly drowned in a rippling roar of thunderous booms and screaming rockets. Heavy artillery was impractical in such a confined space, but Thunderers could carry whole batteries of heavy mortars and short range rockets once you took off their heavy cannons. Quantity had a quality all its own, after all.

The tunnel wall before them abruptly exploded as dozens of shells impacted. Gamma had called for an immediate suppression, so every available gun was firing whatever they had loaded at the target coordinates. Cluster bombs fell in splintering rain while incendiary rockets splashed the tunnel entrance with sheets of blazing thermite. The white puffs of frozen air from cryo shells mixed with the choking clouds released by smoke rounds and the glowing fields of warp missiles, turning the distant tunnel entrance into the most confusing and colorful bit of carnage Selic had ever seen.

The barrage continued, but her HUD could tell that the enemy hadn't stopped fighting. The aliens continued shooting into the forest from the safety of the tunnel, focusing their fire on the last known positions of the Alliance defenders. They knew as much as she did that the barrage couldn't last forever. Eventually, Thunderhead and her teams would run out of shells, or one of the other tunnels would collapse and the artillery would have to divide its fire.

Which was where the Rexes came in, she thought with a grin. Their long-legged pace was quickly bringing them up behind a squad of Raptors and a group of Human marines, so she slid to a halt just as they parted to let the bigger combatants through.

"Hop on," Selic ordered, hunching down to hold herself up with her short arms. "It's time to show those alien bastards who they're messing with."

"You heard the lady!" snapped one of the Humans. "Climb and clip, just like you were trained!"

In under a minute, the cluster of infantry had swarmed their way up and around the three Rexes, magnetic clips and harnesses on their armor seizing onto the loops and bars that had been built into the Rexes' gear for just such a purpose.

"You know, if you told my granddad that his grandson would be riding a T-Rex into battle against a bunch of alien invaders someday, he'd have called you crazy," exclaimed a trooper on Selic's neck as she shoved herself to her feet and began jogging forward again.

"Nobody calls a Tyrannosaurus crazy, kid," Selic replied with a toothy smirk. "Just like nobody makes fun of the arms. It's not good for your health."

"I thought you guys could lift almost a ton with those?" asked the confused soldier.

"We can! These puppies are pure muscle!" she shouted back over the approaching cacophony of artillery strikes. "But all you monkeys seem to remember is when you thought we were lizards with useless little grabbers. Honestly, people got used to the idea we have feathers, you'd think they'd stop asking how I can pick things up with my 'tiny hands'."

A few more crashing strides brought her within sight of Gamma's defense line. This wasn't saying much, since her vision was about thirteen times better than that of the Humans she carried, but even at the measured pace she was maintained to avoid tiring out they were closing the distance pretty quickly. Having such huge legs paid off sometimes.

The larger dinosaurs at Gamma had fallen back into the woods to avoid drawing more antitank fire, while the Humans had taken cover behind some nearby trees and the Raptors had clawed their way directly into the trees themselves so they could attack from above. The trees were specifically designed for such perches, which was good because Raptors weren't good climbers. If it weren't for the fact that the Humans could take cover much easier than dinosaurs could, the mammals would have been the ones in the trees.

Still loping forward, she mentally checked her team's loadout in her HUD. Beta 1 was running the standard Rex heavy melee setup: heavy railguns on his flanks, an omni-ram on his head, and deployable assault rifles for his hands. Beta 2 had lighter gear that reflected his smaller size: light railguns on the flanks, missiles on his head, boost jets…and glide boots. Alright, THAT she could work with.

"Okay, everyone off! This is as close as we get!" she called, grinding to a halt and crouching down again. "Beta 1, flank left. I'll flank right. 2, you're in the middle. Engage with your railguns when you've got a shot. When you draw their fire, we'll charge from the sides."

"I'm the decoy?" Celdrik grumbled, shaking his head. "Sure, send the little guy to get shot at, it's not as if I've got massive plates of tank armor like you do."

"You've got frictionless gear. That means you're the only one fast enough to survive more than thirty seconds against the crap they're going to be sending. Quit bitching and move," Selic ordered, before switching channels again. "Thunderhead, this is Queen. Stop fire."

"_Rodger, Mom. We'll be standing by in case you need us again."_

"I appreciate it, dear," she replied as the endless waves of rolling explosions suddenly died. The smoke and dust from so many impacts remained, obscuring the tunnel mouth from view. Selic took full advantage of the cover, circling carefully through the trees toward her ambush position.

"Queen calling Command. I'm going to need some close support for this."

"_Affirmative, Queen,"_ replied the voice of Captain Elriki. She smiled. The Human was a member of her husband's personal support staff and quite skilled. If anyone could pull this off, he could. _"What did you have in mind?"_

"Beta 2 is going to begin extreme maneuvers in a few minutes, but he's going to get nowhere if he's got to try and fight while weaving through these trees," Selic explained. "I need someone to keep an eye on him and blow any obstacles before he gets to them."

"_Rodger, we can babysit. I have his position, and am standing by to clear the path. Anything else?"_

"Negative. I'll let Beta 2 guide you from here," she said, closing the channel. To her left, the tunnel entrance was still shrouded from view, but the cloud had turned to a strange shade of shimmering gray. So the Spikes could lay smoke too. Not surprising. The geofront's filters would suck it away in a minute or two, but the barrage had annihilated their normal sensors, so she was as blind as the aliens were for now.

As if on cue, a dozen metal drones shot up out of the smoke, spiraling away in evasive patterns. Small arms fire chased them through the air, but the thin objects were fast and agile, more missile than drone. The Alliance hadn't bothered putting in any dedicated antiaircraft guns in the geofront, because what would be the point? Fast fliers were useless underground, and slow fliers like the Soarers could be engaged by normal weapons. Apparently, the Spikes disagreed with that assessment.

Missiles began rocketing up from around the city, and the drones revealed their next trick: countermeasures. Flares fell like burning rain, twisting the missiles harmlessly away, and Selic cursed. These aliens knew how to fight a war, she'd give them that. Without the geofronts, Shanxi would have fallen days ago.

Shots tore outward through the smoke as the soaring drones began transmitting targeting data to the hidden aliens, and the forest around her began exploding. Worse, several large missiles flashed out and up, blazing their way through the artificial sky to crash down on the other side of the geofront. Her thoughts immediately raced to her daughter-in-law, but a burst of profanity reassured her that Katrina had survived the enemy attack.

"_Shit! God damn it! All units, shift position! Don't let the bastards get a clear shot!"_ swore the Cetiosaurus, her voice strained. _"And will someone kill that freaking launcher? This counter-battery fire hurts like a bitch and my people don't have the armor to take more than a few hits!"_

Above, the first of the drones exploded in a blast of fire as one of the missiles finally connected. Their limited size prevented them from carrying too many decoys, Selic supposed as she hunkered deeper into cover. The fact that the Spikes weren't shooting at her or the Betas meant they still hadn't gotten a good look at what was in the forest. They were probably focusing on finding the artillery. A second and third drone went down as the remaining fliers split, obviously trying to collect as much data as they could before they died.

"_Crap! Here comes the push!"_ warned Gamma Lead as four tanks tore out of the smoke, treads screaming across the stony floor. Rockets and small-arms fire followed as infantry armed with thick shields sprinted out of the tunnel, screaming some alien war-cry.

Gamma's defenders opened up with everything they had, shots ringing off the Spike armor in a lethal hail. A tank exploded as one of the city's distant turrets gutted it, and the other three spun sideways to protect the infantry with their armored bulks. As the Spikes began advancing to the edge of the forest, the Raptors sprang, throwing themselves into melee with lethal effect.

That was a mistake. The Spikes had adapted again and were waiting for just such an attack. A second wave immediately marched out of the smoke, firing as they moved. Unlike the frantic haste of the first wave, this group was methodical. Fire teams hosed the Raptors with short, accurate bursts while snipers began engaging from the safety of the tunnel mouth. Four APCs made up the middle of the formation, their heavy cannons blasting at the larger dinosaurs while the tanks began focusing on the wall.

"Beta 2, I think this is your cue," Selic suggested as a Shield's barrier went down ahead of her.

"_I hate my life,"_ he muttered bitterly, but she could hear his glide boots powering up in the background. _"Alright you alien scumbags, why don't you pick on someone three times your size?"_

A pair of railgun shots tore out of the concealing forest, blasting into the front of an APC. The first hit dropped its barriers, the second smashed through the frontal armor of the vehicle, likely pulping anyone unfortunate enough to still be inside. The other carriers immediately stopped, their doors dropping as the infantry bailed out and they opened fire on the distant enemy.

Celdrik was already moving. His feet covered in a superfluid that dropped friction to almost zero, he was skimming sideways through the woods, jets on his sides and back propelling him wherever he needed to go. Trees exploded to nothing before he could reach them, and the large dinosaur literally skated his way around the shots his enemies threw at him.

Sliding sideways, he opened fire on the move, missing one shot but hitting with the other. Damage wasn't really the point anyway. They just needed to be focused on something else for a minute. Though his guns didn't quite pack the punch hers did, they were lethal enough to the light armor of the APCs and his strange movement seemed to be confusing the Spikes to no end.

Even with retros to compensate for the recoil, Celdrik slid slightly backward from each of his shot, so he reversed his movement, skimming back the other way. The trees between him and the aliens kept them from hitting him with homing weapons, and he was easily clearing fifty kilometers an hour now. Another blast from his guns and one of the APCs sagged as its front-right wheel was blasted to bits.

"_Shit!"_ he yelled through his communicator as one of the tanks leveled its gun and fired, missing by a single meter. _"Any day now, Queen! They're going to get lucky some time!"_

"You heard him, Beta 1. Juice up, we're going in loud!" she ordered, unable to hold back the smile on her face. She'd been waiting DAYS for this.

With a crack, she blasted both her railguns into the side of a tank. Caught unaware, the shots drilled right into the back of its turret, decapitating the machine in a spray of fire and metal. Jason's shots were just as effective, punching through the rear armor of a second tank and smashing its eezo core. The fireball was everything she could have hoped for.

The APCs and remaining tank were redeploying to face them, but Selic didn't care. She was already smashing her way through the trees, her blood singing as the medical systems in her suit dosed her with enough drugs to kill a lesser creature.

Stimulant packs were common for melee fighters, and most were the same sort Jason had mounted on his suit: adrenaline shots to give a quicker reaction time and a little more punch, and keep the user from feeling pain for a while. Selic's were a bit…different. She wasn't sure exactly what was in it, and she didn't care. They were called berserker packs, and that was all she needed to know.

"So which one of you bastards wants to die first?!" she yelled, ripping out of the forest in a spray of shattered trees and hosing the alien lines with the two miniguns built into the sides of her helmet. The supercharge on her armor had activated, wreathing her in sparking electricity, and her helmet's visor glowed malevolently. "Don't be shy, I brought enough for everyone!"

Jason was only steps behind, charging through the trees at a sprint and smashing into the side of the final tank. Just before he hit, the glowing edges of a omni-weapon formed around his skull and the crackling energy of his suit's fortification system dumped its full charge into the developing blade. Eight tones of armored dinosaur clashed with alien steel, and found it wanting. Jason's attack punched a meter-wide hole in the side of the tank, and what crew wasn't smashed to pulp was instantly fried by the massive electrical current.

"Oh no," Selic announced, stepping on a soldier that was about to attack the exposed Tarbosaurus with a rocket launcher and crushing him like a bug. The aliens obviously couldn't understand what she was saying, but it didn't matter. When a twelve-meter killing machine screamed at you, you didn't just hear it. You felt it. "You come to my home, kill my friends, and threaten MY FAMILY?! Who the hell do you think I am?"

The turret of an APC turned toward her, so she unfolded the omni-claws built into her feet and kicked it. Hard. The claws slashed a molten hole in the side of the vehicle even as part of her armor's charge exploded outward, flipping the tank onto its back in an explosion of flame.

"I'M A MOTHERFUCKING T-REX, YOU SPIKEY-HEADED ASSHOLES!" she roared, slamming a foot on the overturned APC and perching dramatically as she reduced an entire squad to mist with her miniguns. "I'M THE TYRANT QUEEN OF THIS MUDBALL, AND AS OF THIS MOMENT YOU LITTLE SHITS JUST MOVED TO BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN!"

Across the way, Jason has unfolded the assault rifles built into his arms and was blasting away, but she didn't care. Her vision was turning red, the surging power of her armor urging her onward. This was a target-rich environment. Time to cut loose.

A railgun volley finished the last APC, and then she was on them. T-Rexes had never been predators, evolving long after dinosaurs had eliminated the need to kill each other for food. But something deep in her genes knew that THIS was what her body had really been built for. A single sweep of her tail turned whole squads into burnt husks. A stomp of her foot smashed armor and bone without effort. Everywhere she turned her head, her guns turned enemies into pulp.

"THIS IS WHAT AN APEX PREDATOR LOOKS LIKE!" she bellowed, focusing her attention on the tunnel entrance. More tanks were coming up, with infantry beside them. At a thought, the rows of Hydra missiles built into her armor's spine split and launched, turning the entire tunnel into a mass of fire and blood. "NOW DO WHAT PREY ALWAYS DOES: RUN!"

She stopped for just second and flashed every single one of her armor-clad fangs.

"The fear adds SPICE."

.

.

.

"Jesus Christ ma'am!" yelled a voice, bringing Selic back to world.

"Huh?" she asked, and realized her mouth was full. She spat, and two halves of an alien soldier dropped to the floor. "Oh, gross. I hope I didn't swallow any of that."

"Ma'am?" asked the voice, and Selic recognized the young trooper who had hitched a ride on her earlier. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just…tired," she answered, sagging against a nearby wall. She was in the tunnels now, but how deep she wasn't sure. Her muscles burned, and she could barely breathe. Sliding to the ground, she heard the rattle of gunfire ahead of her. "I blacked out for a bit there. Where are we?"

"We're about half a kilometer into Gamma Tunnel," explained the soldier. "You don't remember?"

"Berserk packs are a hell of a drug, kid. Last I remember, I was raving about how I was going to eat all the aliens," she panted, closing her eyes for a brief rest. "Gaia, I can't believe I actually said that. They're never going to let me live that down, are they?"

"I'm not sure who 'they' are, ma'am."

"Don't worry about it," she replied dismissively, opening some of the vents in her suit to help her cool off. "I'm just going to lay here for a second to catch my breath. Fill me in on what I missed."

"Well, once you blacked out, you started getting pretty incoherent. Snarling, screaming…It was pretty scary, ma'am."

"Yeah, that's pretty common in berserk states," she explained. "The drugs are designed to inhibit higher mental functions and tap into more primitive fight-or-flight responses. There's a reason we don't issue them to most people."

"Well, the Spikes thought it was just as freaky as we did, I guess. They fell back to the tunnel and you chased them. Command rerouted Bishop and some of the new M-29 Grizzly APCs to Gamma, so we linked up with them and followed you in."

"And I made it this far before the drugs wore off?" asked Selic, eyes fluttering open again. "Nice. I'm going to be feeling it tomorrow though. Why aren't we on the front lines though?"

"You started losing momentum a few minutes ago," explained the soldier. "Bishop said the drugs were probably wearing off, so he led the main force ahead while you mopped up. He ordered me to stay here and keep any eye on you."

"That was sweet of him," she muttered, eyelids drooping again. Her suit beeped, automatically injecting a cocktail of glucose, electrolytes, caffeine, and several other chemicals directly into her bloodstream to combat her falling energy levels. They'd hit in a minute or two, but until then…

"Ma'am, if I might ask, what was that fire thing you were doing?" said the boy.

"Fire thing?" replied Selic sleepily, not really paying attention.

"You hit stuff with your tail, or you kicked them, and fire exploded everywhere. Did that have something to do with the electricity on your suit?"

"It's called a supercharger. When I turn it on, the suit stores electricity and dumps out the charge when I hit something." She sighed. So much for her nap. "I've got a mod on there that throws out thermite dust when the attack goes off, so you get that burning blast of fire in addition to the electricity. No idea how it works, probably magnets or some high-tech bullshit. Either way, my supercharger is good for four solid hits before it needs to cool off, and a VI controls it when I go into a rage."

"I've never even heard of superchargers before," stated the Human in confusion. "Are they new?"

"The thermite is, and I think they've got some cryo version coming out soon too. But the supercharger has been around for years now," she murmured sleepily. "They don't issue them for Humans. You mammals are way more useful in the back with guns than punching stuff like a dumb thug. Even then, big supercharged suits like mine are Phoenix-only gear. It's too expensive to mass produce them for every Rex who wants one and fortification systems are generally more useful."

Levering herself up again, Selic felt her energy starting to come back as the medical injections took hold. According to her HUD, her right railgun was scrap, her missiles were depleted, and she'd taken several minor injuries to her head, chest, and legs. Her berserker packs had been disabled until her health was more stable, and over half of her anti-personnel pods had been used.

"Feels like my college days all over again," she muttered, gesturing to dump the damaged railgun and cycle her remaining weapon to a dorsal mount. The fallen gun looked like it had taken a tank round for her and hadn't survived the experience, but better it than her. "Alright kid. Want to do something stupid and dangerous?"

"Hell yes, ma'am."

"Good. Clip on and grab your gun." The Human did as requested while Selic sighted her way down the tunnel. The fighting was at least a hundred meters ahead and around a sharp turn. Sniping wouldn't be an option then. "The manual calls this a 'Cavalry Close Deployment.'"

Taking a deep breath, she began loping down the tunnel with heavy strides. Her lungs still burned, and her thighs ached. Rexes weren't built for endurance running, Humans were one of the only species that could pull off that marathon shit. The berserk pack had drained her even more than she'd thought it would. Still, she'd be damned if she sat in the rear and waited for the fight to come back to her.

Selic screeched around the corner in a scream of claws on metal and surveyed the battle instantly. The Spikes had fallen back to one of the barricades they'd built in the tunnels. The wall was thick but not impenetrable, and Bishop had already ripped the turrets from its top. The two alien tanks rumbling up behind the fortification were a bigger issue. How many of the freaking things did the aliens even have?

Rex Beta was already there, with Beta 1 hammering the lead tank's shields from behind the barrier a Centrosaurus trio was projecting while Beta 2 skimmed out in front to smash alien squads with his tail and fire shots off at anything that looked vulnerable.

"Coming through!" she yelled, firing a blast from her railgun that hit the tank Beta 1 was engaged with. Its barriers finally dropped, and the other Rexes wasted no time in taking advantage. Celdrik's volley jammed the thing's turret, and Jason's shots ripped into the driver's compartment, reducing the vehicle to a smoking wreck.

As she shoved forward, the Shields and Walkers parted before her, giving her a chance to literally vault the Humans and Micros on the main defense line to crash headfirst into enemy territory. Her barriers began to throb as the alien infantry opened fire, but she didn't stop moving. Running directly over the remains of the first tank, she triggered her supercharge and threw herself at the second vehicle. This one was an APC, not a true tank, and the thermite-boosted omni-claws on her feet ripped its armor open like cheap aluminum.

"Kid, cut your clip!" Selic yelled as she swung her tail into a squad of Spikes, throwing out another blast of clinging fire. "Emergency jettison!"

The Human did as instructed, his harness bursting away from him as he fell to the ground at her feet. Not a moment too soon, she reflected as her shields finally failed and the alien bullets started stinging her. It hurt, a lot, but she could handle pain. The armor would keep most bullets from penetrating deep enough to do any damage. Now all she had to do was worry about lucky shots to her eyes or joints, and the risk of bleeding out from so many small injuries.

She opened fire with her miniguns, ignoring the aliens behind her to focus on the reinforcements coming down the tunnel. Her own forces could handle the leftovers. She just needed to keep them moving. Now cycled up to their full spins, the miniguns felt hot even through her armor, but the alien shields obviously couldn't handle that level of firepower. They barely lasted seconds before her guns ripped through them and pulped the soldiers wearing them.

"Hogging all the glory, I see!" yelled a voice from her feet, and she glanced down to see Victor beside her, his energy whips crackling.

"I wouldn't need to if someone around here were doing his job, Bishop!" she shot back, stomping forward a step to seize a rocket trooper in her jaws. A quick shake of her head tore the luckless alien into three separate pieces, which she immediately spat out in disgust. "Damn, these things taste awful!"

"Then stop biting them," Victor suggested, jumping forward with his jets to land in the middle of an enemy squad. His whips cracked in a burning arc, throwing the Spikes to the ground where his omni-claws made quick work of them.

"See, that's why I'm Queen, and you're just Bishop," she remarked, rampaging through two more groups of aliens and letting the anti-personnel pods in her suit take care of them. Razor-sharp blades exploded outward, slicing through shields and armor alike to lodge themselves in the bodies of the aliens. Seconds later, the blades exploded, tearing the luckless Spikes to pieces. "You don't have any style. Never underestimate-AGH!"

Her jab ended in a cry of pain as her right leg went out from under her. Ahead, an alien sniper shimmered out from under a cloak, still clutching the anti-material rifle it had shot her with. The hit had taken her directly in the knee joint, where the thinner armor had been unable to stop the bullet completely.

Victor sprang to her defense, but pulled back at the last moment when a pair of trucks rolled around the corner, the heavy cannons bolted to their tops chattering. Trucks? Maybe the Spikes really were running out of equipment. Still, the improvised combat vehicles were enough to force Victor into a mid-air roll, their shots splashing off his shields as he yanked one of the gunners right into his waiting talons.

Selic staggered, trying to hit the sniper with her miniguns, but they had just swapped in new heat sinks. The guns couldn't spool up before it got another shot off. Right now the armor's systems were able to compensate for her injury with medigel and its exoskeleton, but another hit to that knee and she'd need a new leg. Worse, a shot to the mouth or eye would kill her flat out now that her barriers were down. She fired and prayed, but as the first bullets sparked around the sniper, she knew it was too late.

With a yell, the young soldier she'd left back at the barricade came out of nowhere, sliding across the hood of the alien truck to crash into the sniper with a scissor kick. The Spike's weapon went flying, and the Human followed up his move by deploying his own omni-blade and impaling the creature through the chest. The nearby Spikes immediately opened fire on him, but Victor was already slashing into them, throwing the soldiers around like dolls and shredding them with his glowing claws.

"Nice trick," she growled, trying to get her legs under her again. The pain was mostly gone, but the damaged leg felt sluggish. Damn it. She was what she got for being careless. "They teach you that in Basic?"

"Damn straight," he answered with a nod, firing a quick burst into a nearby Spike with his assault rifle. "Top of my class, Alliance Marine CQC. My sergeant always said lack of claws was no excuse for lack of lethality."

"Now there's a mammal after my own heart," she said with a laugh. The medigel was working now. She could feel her leg getting some of its old strength back. "What's your name, kid?"

"David Anderson, Ma'am."

"Anderson, when all this is over, you and I are going out for drinks," Selic pronounced, stretching to her full height. "I've got a job proposal you just might like."

"Careful. That's how they got me," Victor warned, ducking around a corner, lobbing a grenade, and yanking a pair of Spikes on top of it. "Become a Phoenix! Glory! Fame! The pamphlet fails to mention shitty food, suicide missions, and commanding officers with unrealistic expectations."

"It was a single General, Bishop. You had a whole squad of Raptors backing you up, and you couldn't kill one General. In an ambush!"

"I'm not the one ripping people in half with her teeth while yelling nonsense," countered the Raptor, before an incoming transmission cut them off.

"_Queen, this is King. I need your status."_

"We're halfway up Gamma and still pushing," Selic replied as a Grizzly rolled past her. Normally, she would resent being sidelined for a status report, but between her exhaustion and her bad leg, she was actually glad for the break. "Send us some more APCs and Rex squads, and we'll have the Spikes back on the surface by sundown. Send me Rook and I can shave two whole hours off that."

"_Rook's busy in Juliet. I want you to halt your advance at the nearest defensible checkpoint and bunker up. I'm having the Thunderers switch to Fortress gear, they'll be moving up to support you inside the hour."_

"Oh, I bet Katrina was happy about that, she hates that bulky crap," she muttered. "General, are you sure you want us to halt? Once we lose traction, they're going to regroup and hit us again, and this time they'll be ready for our Megas. I'm surprised they haven't started sending heavy tanks at us yet."

"_It doesn't matter. Just hold your ground and give the Spikes as much space as you can."_

"With respect, sweetie, did you hit your head? Because these are the stupidest orders-"

"_You are holding, DEAR, because we don't need to buy time anymore. We just got word."_

Selic's heart soared. She'd hoped, but there was a part of her that worried their last-ditch defense wouldn't be enough. The fatigue lifted instantly as the pain of her numerous wounds vanished in a wave of pure joy.

"Say it," she whispered softly. "I'm not going to believe it until you say it."

"_We did it, Selic. He's safe. The fleet just arrived in our cluster. ETA to Shanxi is three hours."_

Her fanged mouth split into a genuine smile, holding none of her earlier viciousness and bloodlust.

"Everybody fall back and dig in!" she yelled, still grinning like an idiot. "We're about to see some fireworks."

**Codex: Phoenix Program**

Similar to the Turian Blackwatch or Salarian STG, the Pangaea Alliance maintains a small force of elite operatives for critical missions. Unlike the Blackwatch, Phoenix Operatives are deployed throughout Alliance space, wherever their talents are deemed most useful.

In the Phoenix Program, operatives are rated on five tiers, Zero through Four. Tier Zero operatives are those still going through the grueling application process for the Program and are often sent on dangerous field missions as a form of trial by fire. Tier Four operatives are the most elite soldiers in the Alliance, trained to fight in any environment with any weapon.

Callsigns for Operatives vary based on their assignment. The two most common are based off Human games, but other cultural inspirations like mythological pantheons or superstitions are also popular. Queen (4), Bishop (3), Knight (2), Rook (1), and Pawn (0) all originate from the strategy game known as Chess, while Ace (4), King (3), Queen (2), Jack (1), and Ten (0) come from historical Human card games. The confusion created by these variable and occasionally conflicting terminologies was actually intentional, originating in Task Force Phoenix's early history to confuse enemies listening to their communication chatter.

Phoenix Operatives exist outside the normal chain of command and fall under direct command of the most senior officer present. This officer is given a callsign corresponding with the Phoenix sequence in use at that particular location. In the case of Chess sequences, the commander uses the callsign King. In Card sequences, he or she is known as Trump.

As with most elite organizations, Phoenix Operatives are issued the best gear available. As Pangaea Alliance equipment is designed for practicality and efficiency, this often results in Phoenix Operatives using gear that is much more advanced than what basic soldiers are issued. Despite this, many Operatives pride themselves in using the bare minimum required to accomplish their missions. As the popular saying goes, a Phoenix is deadly because it is a Phoenix, not because of any high-tech weapon.

**Codex: Human and Dinosaur Reproduction**

As different types of dinosaurs began intermingling, interspecies romance was naturally inevitable. This led to the obvious problem of reproduction, as couples of different species could not conceive naturally but often still desired children. For several thousand years, surrogacy and adoption were the solutions of choice for such individuals, but technological advances eventually made such traditions obsolete.

Dinosaur genetic engineering eventually allowed for the alteration of existing sperm and egg cells to the point where an artificially conceived child could still have many of the genetic traits possessed by his or her parents. This also allowed for extensive genetic modifications on unborn children, eliminating harmful genetic diseases and preventing birth defects. This process is distinct from hybridization, as the offspring is still a genetically normal member of whatever species it would normally be. The child merely possesses traits similar to what its parents possessed, such as height, eye color, or skin patterns.

When the survivors of the Architeuthis extinction were revived, they gifted this technology to Humanity. Despite initial ethical concerns, the procedures eventually proved quite popular for the health benefits they provided. In addition, the resurrected dinosaurs offered up tens of thousands of orphaned eggs for Human adoption, to further relations between the two species. Many on both sides were somewhat fearful that children raised by such different parents would have serious developmental problems, but these fears turned out to be unfounded.

The Pangea Alliance currently utilizes artificial conception for 90% of all births. This rapid adoption is believed to be a result of the complexity of Human births, which are often debilitating and can involve serious risks to the mother or child. Eggs and developing fetuses are housed in special nursery facilities where they can receive constant attention and care. The most recent census data suggests that less than fifty percent of Alliance children are born to same species couples. Dinosaur couples often conceive children that do not share a species with either parent, though this trend is less popular among Humans.

The possibility for this technology to be used for the creation of viable clones does exist, but has currently been rejected by Alliance culture. All Human and Dinosaur children are genetically optimized during development and mature at a natural rate, so genetically-identical clones would provide no advantages over normal conception. Due to the Alliance's strong cultural beliefs about individual rights and the importance of parents during childhood development, the ideas of accelerated fetal growth or mass conception for military or industrial purposes have been rejected outright.


	6. Chapter 6

_The space battle was originally going to be one huge chapter, but I underestimated just how big it was going to be and just how much research I needed to do to make everything work. To make things easier on everyone, I've split it into two parts. This is (obviously) Part One, and the exciting conclusion will be along shortly. As I'm not sure I mentioned it before, I do try to respond to all my reviews, so if anyone has comments or concerns feel free to leave them for me. _

_On a related note, if any of you have a working knowledge of advanced paleontology, physics, or astronomy, shoot me a PM. I'm trying to keep the PA's biology and technology somewhat plausible, and there's only so much I can sift off Wikipedia. _

* * *

Novina sighed as Desolas barged into her ship's CIC, a scowl on his face. The bridge was largely deserted at this hour, but wouldn't have been very crowded even if it hadn't been so late. The fleet's two dreadnoughts were handling command and control. Anything that trickled in now was just busy work.

"What is it this time, General?" she asked, not bothering to sound respectful. He'd made his opinion of her quite clear, and she could only be court-marshalled once. "I told you I would keep you appraised on how the evacuations are coming. Standing over my shoulder won't make our shuttles fly any faster."

"The aliens halted their counter attacks three hours ago. Three hours. I warned you that the only reason they would have for digging in is was if their fleet was moving into the area, and yet our ships haven't moved," he snapped angrily. "Our analysts have all agreed with my assessment of the situation. We should be-"

"We should be _what_?" she interrupted angrily. This was her punishment, she knew. Admiral Panlus didn't have the authority to strip her of her command just yet, so instead he'd sidelined her by putting the 92nd on reserve and assigning her to liaise with the ground forces. She'd had preferred a firing squad. "Incoming ships are impossible to detect when traveling at FTL, and the enemy could be approaching from any direction. Redeploying the fleet is pointless until we know where to deploy it to."

"And if the enemy arrives within firing range? How many of our men will die while you reorient-"

"General, let me show you something." Novina pressed a button, and the glowing image of their fleet appeared above the massive holo-emitter that dominated the center of the CIC. "This is us."

She pressed another button, and the glowing ships shrank to pinpricks as the planet behind them took center stage. By the time the image had stopped zooming out, the entire fleet was nothing but a tiny flicker above the planet.

"This is the alien world." Novina clicked the button one more time, and now the planet began to shrink. The Turian fleet was completely invisible now as the view shot outward, showing the entire solar system completely to scale. The system's five planets were nothing but miniscule motes of light, almost invisible, and the sun itself was barely the size of her thumb. "This is the system we're in."

"Is there a point to this light-show?" asked Desolas, unimpressed.

"This point, General, is that space is _large_, on a scale most can scarcely comprehend. Unless these aliens have some form of communication we can't detect, they have no more idea of our position than we do of theirs. Even if they did, the odds of exiting FTL within combat range of an enemy fleet are about the same as the odds of a marksman hitting a target blindfolded from a mile away. And even if they could somehow accomplish that miracle, our ships aren't staying this close to the planet just to make it easier on our shuttles. Unless they magically appear right beside us, anything they shoot at our fleet is going to have an equal chance of hitting the planet behind us. So unless you have some new insights to offer, I'll thank you to leave space combat to the Navy. The admiral knows what he's doing."

"Like he knew what he was doing when he let you run off on your own, I suppose?" asked the general scathingly. "Do you have any idea, Commodore, how many souls your little blunder has cost?"

"Fifty thousand, four hundred sixteen, if you include alien casualties," replied Novina heavily. "But over half of those are just wounded who will likely make fully recoveries."

"You tell a soldier who's had half his face melted off by an alien flamethrower that he's 'just wounded.' This was the first tour for more than a third of my soldiers, Commodore. They were kids. We were just supposed to be running exercises and fighting pirates, until you decided on your own initiative that the best response to a first contact you botched was to call in a full invasion."

"I've already submitted my report, and we're in the process of evacuating the system," she reminded, her voice icy. "By now Councilor Quartius will have informed rest of Council of what's happened here, and by this time tomorrow these aliens will be in the Council's jurisdiction. Until then, the situation is what it is. Lecturing me won't bring your men back, and you don't have the authority to officially reprimand me in any case. If you have a legitimate question or request, feel free to voice it. If not, leave. I have better things to do than listen to you vent your frustrations."

An icon on the display began flashing, cutting Desolas off just as he opened his mouth. Novina recognized it instantly, and she darted to the terminal in a flash. The display opened to a shot of the planet's nearby moon, and a cluster of red icons glowed near its edge.

"All hands, action stations!" she bellowed, keying the intercom with one hand while she typed with the other. "This is not a drill!"

"So they're here?" asked the general, his tone now professional as he stared at the glowing icon and klaxons blared in the background.

"They are," confirmed Novina, pulling up the records for the past few minutes and throwing them into the air in front of her. "Looks like they arrived in the moon's shadow, about seven light seconds away. They're coming out now, so let's see what-Spirits!"

The display was showing a large image with "**VISUAL FEED: +6.78392 LAG**" stenciled into the corner. That wasn't what had caught Novina's attention. The fleet she was looking at was massive in every sense of the word. The computer registered fifty four frigates, six less than what the Fifth Fleet had, but the enemy made up for it with heavier vessels. The aliens had apparently brought fifty cruisers, almost twice the Turian fleet's compliment. When her eyes got to the dreadnought count, she felt her heart skip a beat. The alien fleet didn't have a dreadnought, or even two dreadnoughts like the Fifth did. According to the preliminary report, the aliens had brought three **super**-dreadnoughts. Even the Asari could only boast a single super-dreadnought in their entire empire. The sheer scale of the vessels was mind-boggling.

Technically the huge things were still somewhat smaller than the _Destiny Ascension_. Still, at a kilometer long and three kilometers wide they were big enough that it made little difference in the long run. Their broad, flat shapes contrasted starkly with the slim profiles of Turian and Salarian dreadnoughts. When Novina was little, she had a documentary on an obscure Hanar animal called a whale ray. She was immediately reminded of that monster when she looked at the titanic flying wing design of the enemy dreadnoughts. The thin escorting cruisers were toys compared to the dreadnoughts' bulk.

"Please tell me I'm reading this screen wrong," Desolas muttered, his voice carrying something very close to actual fear.

"You're not reading it wrong," she replied, and noted that she sounded as fearfully awed as he did. "How did they…What would they even need those for?"

"It gets worse," stated the general, his voice going grim. "Look at the cruisers."

Novina did, and gasped again.

"Eight hundred meters long? That's the size of a dreadnought!" she hissed, trying to keep her voice low. The bridge's combat crew were filtering into the room with professional haste, and if she started panicking, they certainly would. "Why would the computer claim they're cruisers if-oh. That's why. They're damn battlecruisers!"

"Battlecruisers?"

"The Krogan used them during the Rebellions. They're why we have the Treaty of Farixen in the first place," Novina explained darkly. "The idea is that you take a cruiser's hull and mount the main gun of a dreadnought on it. That way they're more maneuverable than a dreadnought but hit much harder than a cruiser. You can get a lot of firepower very quickly that way, but they're glass cannons. They can't mount the armor to take what they dish out."

Around her she could hear the rest of the crew beginning to mutter. They could see the images of the enemy fleet almost as well as she could, and they knew what it meant. Any moment now, one of them would ask the obvious question: how was anyone supposed to beat a fleet like that? It would be another hour before the last of the ground forces were evacuated. Until they were, retreat wasn't an option. But even their best ships wouldn't have a chance against those monsters in combat. The situation was so blatantly unfair it was almost cruel.

Just to get the mocking images away from her, she began cycling through the thermal and radiation readings for the alien fleet and suddenly got her next surprise. The thermal image showed nothing but a massive, swirling cloud of heat. The enemy ships were completely obscured. The radiation scans showed the same thing: the entire alien fleet was just a huge ball of ECM and interference. Every passive sensor reported nothing but a cloud of white noise that completely blocked the enemy from detection.

"This doesn't make sense…" Novina muttered, checking again. The result was the same. Only visual scans could make out anything about the aliens, and even then the space around their fleet was tinged a slight metallic color. "They've got us outnumbered and outclassed. Why are they hiding?"

"I can think of a few reasons," replied Desolas with a shrug. "For starters, I suspect trying to aim a spinal weapon simply with visuals would be extremely difficult."

"Against a moving target at range? It's impossible," she agreed. "But that's the thing. Unless they have some kind of passive sensors we don't know about, that cloud blinds them just as much as it does us. Maybe even more, since they're right in the middle of it."

"What are the odds that they somehow do have a sensor we've never heard of? They've pulled off quite a few impossible things these past few weeks, it seems."

"Actually, they haven't," Novina countered, pulling up several images for Desolas to review. "The thermal clips, electro-charged combat suits, hyper-dense ammunition, all that stuff isn't too far ahead of what we've got. Some of their gadgets, like the FTL missiles or frictionless gel, are actually things we could build right now if they weren't so impractical."

"Which suggests that these aliens really aren't that much more advanced than we are," said the general with a nod. "This is a dangerous gamble you're making. If your assumption is wrong and they really can see us, our ships are going to be shredded."

"They're going to be shredded either way if we can't find some kind of weakness to level the playing field," she replied gravely. "Besides, my opinion counts for less than nothing right now. My squadron is on reserve. We're supposed to hold position and protect the troop transports. Nothing more. Admiral Panlus is the one who is going to have to figure out how to beat those monsters."

"Then I suppose you're as helpless as I am." Desolas sighed. "It's not a feeling I'm used to."

"Helplessness is a state of mind," retorted Novina. "Battle is fluid, and reserves are kept in the rear for a reason. We may see combat yet. In the meantime I need to try and figure out as much about those alien ships as I can so if we are deployed we won't be completely slaughtered."

"I'll leave you to it then. Please have someone notify me when my troops have been recovered."

The general turned to leave, and Novina was suddenly wracked with indecision. On the one hand, the man was an obnoxious annoyance who actively detested her. On the other, he was a combat veteran who had been matching wits with these aliens for days. If anyone could figure out how they thought, he could. She growled inaudibly and forced back a scowl. Duty demanded everything. Even humility, sometimes.

"Wait," she called, and he stopped in his tracks. "General, if you have no pressing other duties, I would like you to request that you remain on the bridge as a consultant. We're going to need every advantage we can get."

"I would be happy to assist you, Commodore," said Desolas, with a smile that looked just a little too smug for Novina's liking. "How much time do we have before they enter combat range?"

"A while. They're definitely headed this way but they're still over six light seconds out. Even dreadnought fire is relatively ineffective at ranges greater than one light second." Seeing the general's confusion, she suppressed another sigh. Ground pounders. They always expected space battles to happen like in the vids. Real battles were mostly just sitting around while fleets maneuvered. "Look, a shot from one of our dreadnoughts goes at four thousand kilometers per second, right? One point three percent of light speed."

"I did pay attention in Basic, thank you," stated Desolas curtly. "Can we move this along, please?"

"Fine. The point is that even once the enemy gets to one light second, they're still going to have over a minute to see our shots coming. That's generally more than enough time to dodge. Space battles may take place over huge distances, but range is still very much a factor."

"What about their relativistic weapon? Since it goes ninety times faster than normal shells, it would logically have ninety times the range. What's to stop them from annihilating us with it a distance?"

"I've got a couple theories about that. First, they might not have any of those weapons in this fleet." Desolas snorted derisively, and Novina smiled. "I don't think that's likely either. The second theory is that they might have a cultural quirk we don't know about. Some kind of honorable tradition that forces them to engage us in fair battle or something."

"The number of traps and ambushes in their tunnels suggests otherwise. And I doubt a race like that would both hiding behind ECM like they're doing now."

"Exactly. We haven't seen anything that would indicate a code of honor that outweighs practical tactics. Quite the opposite. So I think the real reason is that their weapon can't be used at extreme ranges at all. Look at this."

She waved, and an image of a shattered Turian cruiser appeared. She knew Desolas had likely seen the picture before, but she waited a moment for him to nod in confirmation before pressing a holographic icon. A filter swept over the image, showing a massive cloud of blue spreading from the impact point.

"What the hell is that?" he asked, squinting at the strange color.

"Cherenkov radiation. It's what you get when a ship's eezo core malfunctions and drops them out of FTL too soon," she explained. "But the important question is, what's it doing here? The alien missile never actually made it to light speed."

"From your tone, I assume you already know the answer," stated the general, a trifle grumpily. "I repeat: get to the point."

"This level of Cherenkov radiation is consistent with the catastrophic failure of an eezo core going faster than light. I don't think the missiles travel close to light speed before hitting, I think they travel at light speed, with their drives rigged to fail a split second before they impact."

"Xeno-engineering isn't my field, commodore. What does this have to do with why they can't just destroy us at a distance?"

"Because the missiles are only going fast enough to do this kind of damage for less than a tenth of a second. So if the drive shutdown is programmed even fraction of a second too soon, the missile will be going too slow and will splash harmlessly off the target's shields. A fraction too late and the missile won't even go to FTL because the drive's safeties will kick in. The amount of hacking needed to get a drive to accept this kind of trajectory even with the programmed failure makes my brain hurt. So to get within that tiny window they're going to need massive LADAR arrays and they're going to have to be pretty close to what they're shooting. If the target has time to move even a little, it'll throw their calculations wildly off."

"Even with the timing required, that missile would be going fast enough to give them a pretty wide margin of error," reasoned the general. "I'd imagine it's still going to outdistance our weapons by quite a bit."

"At least twice the effective range of the guns on our dreadnoughts, last time I crunched the numbers," Novina confirmed. "But even with that, at the speed their moving we'll still have at least ten minutes before the shooting starts."

"That gives us ten minutes to figure out what they're doing with this strange energy field then," said Desolas, his tone businesslike. "Can active sensors penetrate it?"

"Yes. LADAR is powerful enough that if we can see it visually, getting a lock would be easy."

"Then the reverse is also true. They should be able to target us with their LADAR from inside the cloud."

"Doing that would negate the point of using the cloud at all. The thing about active sensors is that it's incredibly obvious when you use them. The moment they hit us with LADAR, we'll be able to trace the beam back and know exactly where they are."

"Alright. This cloud makes their entire formation glow like the Silverlight Strip, making any kind of stealth impossible," he mused. "It blinds all their passive sensors, and they can't use active sensors without exposing themselves. So what good is it?"

"Hmmm…" Novina glared at the holographic display before her, willing it to show her something useful. She rapidly flipped through the images of the alien fleet again. Something was off, she could feel it. In the background she could see the green icons of the rest of the fleet peeling away from the planet to intercept the aliens, but she ignored them. Something was missing, something obvious… "The heat!"

"Heat?" asked Desolas, confused.

"Look at this." She brought up the thermal image of the enemy ships, a murky cloud of color swirling against the darkness of space. "Where's the heat from their thrusters?"

"Hidden behind the cloud, I would assume."

"How? Even a fusion torch burns hotter than the surface of a star. Based on the speed they're moving, those ships probably use antiproton drives like we do, which get even hotter than fusion drives. The thermal readings we're getting from that cloud don't even come close to those temperatures. We should be seeing huge heat blooms in the cloud from each of the ships, but we aren't!"

"Interesting. Could they have turned the drives off to coast?"

"Not a chance. Look at this."

Pressing another set of holographic keys, she brought up the icons for the enemy fleet with a thin line showing their approximate course. The glowing red holograms began moving, and the line slowly shifted to the right.

"That happened three minutes ago, when our fleet started redeploying against them. They're maneuvering under power and accelerating. That means they have to have their drives engaged, but somehow their engines aren't radiating any serious heat," said Novina, confused. "Which should be impossible."

"Could they have some type of reactionless drive?"

"I doubt it. The only design for a reactionless drive I ever saw that was remotely plausible was a plan to use an oversized mass effect generator to make mass pockets for the ship to fall into. But their dreadnoughts are too big for that design to work. If they tried it we'd be able to detect them just using the gravity fluctuations the monsters created."

"So we're back at square one." He clicked his mandibles in disgust. "Alright, let's try this another way. We know they're rational and practical. Since they have superior firepower and numbers but are still going out of their way to create a field to hide in, it stands to reason that there is something they don't want us to see. What could that be?"

"Not a ship, we'd have spotted it visually by now," she stated thoughtfully. "A weak point or a secret weapon, maybe?"

"Could be. Decoys, perhaps, to hide their real numbers?"

"Decoys don't work in space," Novina said dismissively. "Without the thermal bloom of a drive core and the radiation output of a reactor, they're pathetically easy to…"

Desolas smiled smugly again, but this time she was too overjoyed to be annoyed. It made perfect sense. If they could somehow hide their engine emissions (or didn't have any to begin with), the cloud made perfect sense. The 'white noise' would make it impossible to use background heat or radiation to tell the difference between a hollow decoy and a real warship. Eventually the enemy would get close enough to penetrate the illusion with visual comparisons, but by that point their forces would be fully committed. The entire enemy deployment could be manipulated to a ridiculous amount.

"This is brilliant. The Salarians have been trying to figure out how to do something like this for decades!" she exclaimed, before sobering. "Trying to plan around those decoys is going to be a nightmare. For all we know, that entire fleet is nothing but bait to draw our main force away from the planet."

"Even so, they still aren't using this technology to its full effect," Desolas said darkly. "They should be trying to force us to split up and defend against four or five possible fleets, not just one large one. So the next question is: why are they clustering their decoys like this?"

"For the same reason they aren't barraging us with FTL missiles right now: because something about their technology won't let them." Novina turned to a nearby technician and frowned when she realized she didn't know his name. She'd arranged to transfer her most promising officers to other ships so their careers would be somewhat shielded from the fallout of her enormous blunder, but she still missed her old crew. "Ensign, signal Admiral Panlus. He probably already knows, but advise him that the enemy may be using decoys to hide their real numbers."

"What are these?" asked the general, pointing at a pair of tiny green icons near the holographic alien ships. As was normal for combat situations, the majority of the display was taken up by the tactical map, showing the positions of all known enemy and allied assets, as well as any relevant cosmic geography. The alien world and its moon were both rendered, as was the protective shroud of sensor noise that radiated from the enemy fleet.

"Those are sensor drones. We launched them a few minutes ago," Novina explained, pulling up a schematic for him. "They're mostly used for scouting. Admiral Panlus must have ordered them to get a closer look at the enemy ships when they first arrived. It looks like they're about to enter LADAR range, so we should get a lot of new-WHOA!"

Two red dots shot out of the enemy formation in a bizarre zig-zag pattern and smashed into the drones. The green icons immediately vanished, replaced by glowing symbols reading **CONTACT LOST**. She sighed.

"And that's the danger of active sensors. They expose you as much as they expose the enemy. Hopefully the drones got something useful before the aliens took them down."

"I thought the usual countermeasure for drones was GARDIAN lasers," mentioned Desolas. "What was that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine right now. Judging by the way they adjusted their trajectory I'd guess they were missiles, but I've never seen a missile move like that before."

"Ma'am, incoming data packet from the admiral," called her nameless ensign, and Novina resolved to look up the poor boy's name later on. She hated not knowing the people under her command. "I'm sending it over now."

A cluster of images and datastreams appeared on the edges of the display, and her mandibles widened in satisfaction.

"They were definitely missiles," she reported, digging into one of scrolling windows of text. "But this can't be right."

"What can't be right?"

"Those missiles clocked in at one percent of lightspeed! Those are ballistic velocities!"

"Yes, I recall. You lectured me at length about the subject just a few minutes ago," reminded Desolas, his smile slightly mocking. "I assume normal missiles aren't quite as fast?"

"Not even close," Novina said, reading more of the report. "Normally, missiles and torpedoes use mass effect fields to spike their mass before impact, so they can penetrate barriers. These missiles did the same trick in reverse, dropping their mass to make them faster and harder to intercept."

"I'll assume that's why they moved in that strange pattern?" He touched several icons of his own, and the flight of the missiles repeated in slow motion. No longer so quick, she could easily see that the zig-zag flight path was actually a series of incredibly swift jumps punctuated by sudden periods of deceleration while the missile reacquired its target.

"Oh, that's clever," said Novina, admiration in her voice. "The missiles move to fast too adjust their own trajectory on the fly, so they hop toward their target in bursts. That way they stay accurate but are still moving fast enough that dodging or intercepting them would be extremely tricky."

"That would mean they're impacting with almost no mass though," he pointed out. "Wouldn't that make them useless?"

"Against capital ships, sure," she agreed. "The lighter the projectile, the sooner barriers can block it. Without a medium to transfer the shockwave and oxygen to fuel a fireball, fusion warheads like what those missiles had can only do damage if they get within a kilometer of the target. Most missiles need as much mass as they can get."

"So they're interceptor weapons then. Fighters and bombers don't have the barriers larger ships do, and with the thin armor they carry it would be quite simple to get a small fusion missile within lethal distance."

"Exactly. These things were built to take out enemy attack craft at long range. What I still don't get is why they would bother with something like this."

"I would assume the purpose is self-explanatory. It's an ingenious setup. I'm surprised we never thought of it."

"We did think of it. But each of those missiles costs over a million credits to build. Against a capital ship that kind of expense is justified, but for fighters and drones it's too much cost for too little return. GARDIANS kill attack craft just as well, and they'll do it without bankrupting you."

"They do have antiaircraft lasers, we saw them when they ambushed our dropships," mused the general. "So either their lasers are somewhat shortranged, in which case these need these missiles to compensate, or they're economy is large enough that they can afford to use this kind of weapon."

"Unless they've found a bottomless eezo mine, I highly doubt that last one is plausible." Novina pulled up a new schematic and slid it through the air toward him. "Look at this and you'll see what I mean."

"Two hundred missiles?!"

"That's the preliminary estimate for each of their frigates, yes. According to what the drones were able to get before they were destroyed, each one is about three hundred meters long and packed with missile tubes." She eyed the strange vessel balefully. It was shaped a bit like a freighter, with laser emitters along its spine and some kind of plated metal skirt that extended behind it to shield the thrusters from view. The missile pods were mounted in heavy racks to the sides of the vessel, and looked like they could be jettisoned in an emergency. "The large ship size actually makes sense, considering how big some of these aliens can get, but I'm not seeing any sort of heavy armament. Unless they have a second model of frigate somewhere in there, I think they're only designed to screen for the larger ships."

"Assuming that isn't one of their decoys," he reminded.

"It's not. This was the ship that destroyed our drones. Though while we're on the subject, I think I just found out how they're hiding their drive emissions." Novina gestured, and the metal skirts on the rear of the frigate were highlighted. "They're using these."

"They're blocking the heat with those plates? I thought you said drives burned at millions of degrees. I would assume most metals melt at those temperatures, or at least get hot enough that we'd be able to detect them."

"They aren't blocking the heat, they redirecting it. If we were behind their formation right now, we'd be getting barraged with the reflected thermal radiation from those drives."

"That's a huge flaw," he pointed out. "A single picket satellite behind them would make their entire cloak useless."

"I know. And it gets stranger. That huge cloud of heat they're generating? It's from radiator droplets."

"You're getting too technical for me again," said Desolas with a sigh. "Explain what you mean by radiator droplets, and try to keep your explanation from being too condescending or long-winded please. We've only got a few minutes before they enter the range you estimated for their FTL weapon."

"So we do. Hmm." Novina surveyed the tactical display critically. "Looks like Admiral Panlus is having the cruiser squadrons spread out to envelop the enemy fleet. Makes sense."

"Why does it make sense?" he asked, irritation slipping into his tone.

"Because of those droplets I told you about. Combat ships running hot use tanks of liquid lithium or sodium to absorb the heat. The coolant is sprayed into space as millions of micrometer droplets, which flush the heat away and are then collected in the rear of the ship so they can be reused."

"Fascinating, but I fail to see how it's relevant."

"Instead of spraying their droplets from one end of a ship to another, they're actually firing them into space. According to what the drones collected, those decoys are using a combination of magnets and mass effect fields to guide the flow of coolant in regular currents across the fleet, creating the cloud of thermal 'noise.' It also means they've got to have a certain amount of real ships in that formation, otherwise they wouldn't have enough droplets to shield them. This fleet's definitely not a faint."

"Good to know. And you're right, the admiral's decision makes sense in that context. Against a clustered enemy on open ground, encirclement is a good stratagem," Desolas agreed. "It's also the best counter for those cruisers."

"What do you mean?" Novina asked, pulling up the image of one of the massive alien cruisers. Long and thin, it looked more like a gun with engines attached than an actual ship.

"Do you see the spurs on the front and back of the ship?" he asked, pointing them out to her. "I may not know much about naval engagements, but I still know a maneuvering thruster when I see one."

"Spirits, you're right. How could I have missed that?" The thrusters encircled the prow and stern of the cruiser, giving the vessel a spoked, barbell-like appearance. They were obvious in retrospect. "With this many lateral thrusters, they're going to be insanely maneuverable for their size."

"Exactly. The best way to pin down something like that would be to catch it in a crossfire, correct?" He looked to her for confirmation, and when she nodded he continued. "They outrange and outgun our cruisers by a considerable margin, so superior numbers are our best advantage right now."

"Unless we don't have superior numbers at all," Novina reminded. "But I see your point. Still, that just makes this cloud even more of a large investment for a comparatively small reward, since they can't break off to stop an encirclement. Being able to hide your numbers isn't anything game changing, so I can't see why they would give up tactical flexibility just for that. There has to be some other purpose for it."

"I wonder…" mused the general thoughtfully.

"What?"

"Something one of my subordinates told me when I was planet-side," he said, tapping the metallic splint wrapped around his broken arm. "She said the alien defenses were designed to fight an enemy that operated very differently than our forces did. Right now that cloud might only be good for confusing us, but it might be much more effective against someone else."

"Someone with a range advantage, maybe," Novina mused, the pieces beginning to fall into place. "The relativistic weapon, the battlecruisers, the jump missiles, they're all designed to increase engagement range. The cloud might be useless in close battle, but against something trying to lock on at a distance it would be a nightmare to sort through."

"I suspected as much. It's possible that this mystery enemy-" he began, but suddenly stopped suddenly. "The cloud's shrinking. How close are they?"

"A little more than one light second away from our forward elements," she replied grimly. "This is it. If they're letting the field disperse, they must be in range."

She pulled up a visual feed of the enemy fleet and saw that it was literally breaking apart. As she watched, one of the monstrous super-dreadnoughts split into dozens of small sections that began collapsing in on themselves. She knew just from the handgun at her side that mass effect technology allowed even complex mechanisms to fold away for easy storage, but she'd never seen anything on this scale. In seconds the alien objects had gone from a hollow three hundred meter hull façades to small drones barely larger than bombers.

The scene repeated itself across the enemy formation, as ship after ship began splitting and folding inward, revealing themselves to be nothing more than empty shells. According to the display, over half of the enemy formation had been comprised of decoys, just as she'd predicted. Unfortunately, not all of it was an illusion. Twenty of the horrifically well-armed cruisers remained, with thirty missile frigates standing by in escort formation. Worst of all, one of the super-dreadnoughts was definitely the genuine article. If the _Destiny Ascension's_ weaponry was any indicator of what that thing was capable of, it might be able to take on half their fleet by itself. Still, at least they had something of a chance now.

A flashing alert icon suddenly appeared, hovering over the dreadnought Admiral Panlus was using as his flag ship. Novina swore.

"What is it?" Desolas asked, his face grim.

"They're painting our flagship with LADAR. Massive signals, at least five times as strong as the stuff we're using," she reported, pulling up a feed of the dreadnought. The big ship was listing to the side, her retros blazing hard enough to be clearly seen even at this distance. "Looks like they're trying to evade the beam."

"Can they do it?"

"Against a laser? They don't have a chance. Our only hope is that the movement will throw the aliens' targeting off and keep-"

A dot of light shot from the super-dreadnought's icon on the tactical display, almost too fast for her eyes to even register, but they didn't need to. By the time the computer had received the data and processed it for display, the flagship's video feed had already showed Novina the tale's grisly end.

The missile had impacted along the mighty dreadnought's bow, ripping through her titanic barriers like they weren't even there. The force of the hit was so great that the forward section of the dreadnought had been snapped completely off and now drifted lifelessly through space. The rest of the vessel was even worse off. The gaping hole in her hull was hemorrhaging debris like an open wound as internal explosions caused deck after deck to begin crumbling. The remains of the ship's spine were covered in bulges and cracks, indicating that the main gun had suffered a catastrophic failure and taken the surrounding compartments with it. The engines were still online, firing in fitful bursts as the navigators tried to get the ruined ship under control.

"Spirits," Desolas hissed, watching the carnage in awe, but something else had captured Novina's attention.

"The targeting alert is still on," she said quickly, pulling up the information for the enemy super-dreadnought. "They're going to fire another shot!"

"Can they even do that?"

"They're using missiles, not guns. As long as they can keep a lock, they can fire as many times as they want."

"But why would they? The ship's a total loss. It would be a waste of effort."

"They don't know that. She's still moving. For all they know, she could still fight. That aside, she's also our flagship. So long as Admiral Panlus is still issuing orders from her, she's a threat. Right now they're waiting to see if the crew abandons ship. If they do, they'll know she's out of the fight. But if the admiral doesn't order an evacuation-"

A lance of light shot across the display at the same time as the remains of the dreadnought exploded in a wave of debris and fire. Novina couldn't tell if the missile had struck the crippled ship's antimatter fuel or her eezo core, but it had certainly hit something vital. Instead of just braking apart, the dreadnought had been completely obliterated. The drifting bits of wreckage were so badly mangled she could barely tell that they had all once belonged to the same ship.

"Damn Panlus!" Desolas swore as the watched the molten remains float slowly away. "He should have evacuated!"

"Yes, he should have," she agreed, drawing a slightly surprised glance from the general. "Panlus knew they were painting him and knew there would likely be a follow-up volley if they didn't abandon ship. The man wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't have ordered his crew to their deaths fruitlessly. So why did he believe they needed to stay?"

"Think quickly," he said, pressing an icon for the tactical display. A red line extended out from the enemy super-dreadnought's icon, slowly sweeping across the approaching Turian fleet. "It's looking for a new target."

"It'll go for our other dreadnought. That's the obvious choice," Novina said, highlighting its position in the middle of the fleet's right flank. "I wondered why the admiral was putting the dreadnoughts on opposite flanks instead of in the middle of the formation. He knew this was going to happen."

"A shame he's too busy being dead to share any more of his insightful predictions. Who's in command now?"

"Commodore Ocasus, on the other dreadnought. He graduated from the academy a few months before I did. He's a brilliant commander."

"He's going to be a dead one if we don't come up with something."

"Easier said than done. I think I know why Panlus didn't order the evacuation, for all the good it does us," she stated with disgust. "Without the cloud getting in our way, we've been able to get a much better idea of what their ships are armed with. Look at this."

She slid a holographic image of the alien super-dreadnought through the air to Desolas. The picture was three dimensional and immediately zoomed in to highlight a rectangular opening in the middle of the ship that yawned like the maw of a massive shark.

"This is the rack for those relativistic missiles," he remarked, examining it. "Well, silo might be a better term. I've never seen a guided weapon on this scale before. Each of those missiles is practically the size of a frigate!"

"Exactly. That rack has space for twelve missiles, and two are missing." She drummed her fingers on the railing beside her. "With weapons that size, I'm willing to bet that their dreadnought can't reload during combat. So they're only going to get twelve shots, and they've already used two of them."

"Twelve shots is still more than enough to take out both of our dreadnoughts and almost a third of our cruisers. Our ships won't be able to stand up to their battlecruisers one on one. If they can negate our numerical advantage, we've lost."

"I know. And it looks like they've found Ocasus' ship already," Novina remarked as the red line finished crawling across the Turian fleet and came to rest on the glowing green shape of their final dreadnought. "Come on, you brilliant jackass. You outscored me in every simulation, you've got to be able to come up with something…"

As if in answer to her prayers, the targeting alert abruptly vanished from above the dreadnought, reappearing over the tiny hologram of a frigate. The small ship had smoothly slid into the targeting beam's path the moment it settled over the dreadnought, and was now acting as a living shield for the larger vessel.

"Clever," Desolas remarked. "They're hardly going to waste one of their precious super-missiles on a mere frigate, especially when we have sixty of the things. And the missile can't over penetrate because of how rapidly it decelerates."

"It's a good trick, but it's only going to buy him time. That beam moves at the speed of light. A single frigate isn't going to be able to cast a sensor shadow large enough to protect a dreadnought for long." On cue, the spreading Turian ships suddenly began shooting forward, accelerating to their maximum velocities. Fighters, bombers, and drones of every type poured from the formation in a glowing swarm, streaking toward the enemy fleet. Novina nodded in satisfaction as she watched the small icons move. "Yeah, that's the logical move. We definitely need to close the distance in a hurry, before they pick us off."

"I think we can safely assume the aliens know that as well. We're going to be playing right into their hands, charging like this."

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," she said with a shrug. "Either we stay at range and slowly get picked off, or we make a suicide charge right into their teeth. Both ways we're going to-wait, what are they doing?"

The red alien icons were slowly shifting, spinning in place to parallel the ominous line of the targeting laser. The display suddenly began sparkling like rain as tiny red motes shot from their formation toward the distant Turian ships.

"I thought you said they couldn't hit us at this distance," Desolas said, watching the shots slowly inch closer. "Are they trying to shoot down the frigate?"

"Ha. At the speed those projectiles are traveling, they wouldn't even have a chance at hitting a dreadnought, much less something as small and agile as a frigate." She surveyed the tactical display critically. "They sure are throwing a lot of firepower at us though. Six dreadnought-class guns on the super-dreadnought alone, not counting all the shots from their battlecruisers."

"Why would they bother then? They have to know their ordinary shots wouldn't have a chance of hitting at this distance. They've tipped us off about how much firepower their flagship is carrying and for what?" asked the general, watching the shots zip harmlessly past the alien frigate.

The targeting alert suddenly reappeared over the dreadnought's icon, and Novina ground her mandibles against her jaw hard enough that the noise was audible.

"For this. They weren't trying to hit us at all," she growled as the lock icon flipped back to the frigate, then to the dreadnought again. "They just needed us to move. The frigate had to reposition to avoid being hit, and when it did it exposed the dreadnought. As long as both ships have to keep dodging, even if they only move slightly, they're never going to be able to achieve the synchronization they need to fully block that laser."

"I suppose that's it for our dreadnought then," Desolas said in disgust. "And once it's gone, they're going to start taking apart our cruiser groups as well."

"It's not over yet. There has to be another trick he can try. Maybe chaff, or some kind of-"

"Ma'am, incoming transmission from Commodore Ocasus!" called her ensign, and for once Novina was too aggravated to feel guilty about not knowing his name. "Highest priority!"

"Put him through, now!" she snapped, striding over to the communications terminal as swiftly as decorum would allow. A hologram of the commodore appeared in the air, his young face looking grim.

"Novina. I'm afraid we don't have time for formalities. Have you been keeping an eye on the battle?"

"Of course sir, but I'm afraid I haven't been able to come up with a way to stop the enemy's relativistic missiles. Perhaps-"

"Don't bother. There isn't a counter, at least not one we could implement in time. I need you for something else."

"Sir?"

"I'm adjusting the chain of command. In a minute or two, the aliens are going to get enough data to destroy my ship. When they do, you will assume command of the fleet."

"What? I don't understand."

"We can't afford to let them continue to blast their way through our command staff. Your ship is the only command-capable vessel not currently in range of the enemy's weapon."

"Sir, I strongly advise you to reconsider. I'm on reserve. It was my mistake that got us into this mess in the first place."

"I don't have time to argue, Commodore. You were never formally relieved of command, so your status as a reserve is irrelevant. The others may not like it, but they're Turians. They'll follow orders. As for your other concern, you might be aware that your former Second was transferred to my ship several days ago. We spoke at length about your decision, and I have-"

The transmission abruptly ended in a blast of static, and Novina whirled around to face the tactical display. She already knew what she would find.

Ocasus's ship had been fortunate. She had been facing the enemy super-dreadnought head on, which made her a much smaller target. The missile had skimmed along the dreadnought's starboard side, peeling the armor away in a molten scar half a kilometer long before striking a glancing blow to the rear of the ship. Even this indirect hit had torn the dreadnought's starboard wing completely off and left much of her engines a twisted ruin. This time the aliens didn't bother waiting to see if the crew would evacuate. A second missile hit a split second after the first, hammering the dreadnought head on. The shot borrowed straight up the ship's length in a shower of broken fragments, gutting her in a fraction of a second. There was no explosion, which almost made it worse. To Novina, seeing the ruined skeleton of the once-proud ship was almost sickening.

A single message flashed onto the tactical display, small enough that only she could read it. She didn't bother. She knew what it said.

_Fleet Command transferred to Commodore Novina Cartius. Enter Flagship Mode? Y/N_

"What's Flagship Mode?" Desolas asked, walking up behind her.

"It's a mode for the holo-tank. The tactical mode it's in now is just designed to assist with short-term maneuvering and squadron level orders. Flagship mode displays a lot more information and is for commanding multiple squadrons at a time," she explained, her voice hollow. "All squadron command ships can do it, just in case the heavier vessels are disabled. I've only ever used it in simulations, and I hated it. The scale's too large to issue detailed orders to individual vessels."

"That's what your subordinates are for," reminded the general softly, so they wouldn't be overheard. "I have two other generals and a half dozen legates that micromanage for me. You've got squadron leaders that can do it for you."

"You don't understand. I don't know what to do!" she hissed, her voice full of quiet desperation. "We're out teched, out gunned, and fighting on their home ground. They've got a fleet full of battlecruisers and a super-dreadnought that fires FTL missiles and Spirits know what else! You expect me to come up with a way to stop those using just frigates and cruisers?"

"Yes, I do. There are fifty thousand sailors looking at displays just like this one and trusting with all their hearts that their commander is going to bring them out of this alive, or at the least make their deaths mean something. They're trusting you, Commodore. Think of something."

"No. I can't do it. You said it yourself: the last time I had command, I screwed up and got twenty thousand people killed. Twenty-five thousand, if you count the crews of those dreadnoughts. You'd probably be a better choice to lead at this point."

"Let me make something perfectly clear," whispered Desolas, staring her directly in the eyes. "I don't like you. I never have. This war should never have been fought. But like it or not, we are fighting it, and like it or not, you ARE in command. So stop moping about the twenty-five thousand you let die, and start worrying about the seventy-five thousand who are going to die if you don't get off your ass and do something!"

"I don't know what to do!"

"No one does. Fake it."

"What?"

"FAKE. IT. Those captains out there don't need a brilliant stratagem that can make up for how out-gunned we are. They need a stoic face and a calm voice telling them that everything is under control. It doesn't matter if ships are burning around them or their guns are running dry so long as they believe that SOMEONE has a plan. Forget trying to win. Hold the line. That's all we need right now."

Novina's eyes glanced at the tactical display's accusatory question and saw that the alien flagship had locked onto another cruiser. A frigate again dropped into place to block the beam, presumably acting on orders Ocasus had given before he was blown to bit. It wouldn't matter, she knew. In seconds or minutes, the cruiser or the frigate would slip up, and the aliens would claim their next kill. The fleet's attack craft were closing now. In a minute or so, they'd enter the range of the aliens' jump missiles and even more people would die. The battlecruisers were shifting again, preparing their guns to barrage the luckless Turian squadrons as they frantically tried to close the distance. The battle was obviously hopeless. The best thing to do would be to retreat now and leave the remaining ground forces behind. Better to lose ten thousand lives than waste thirty thousand more buying time for them to evacuate.

But this was about more than just math.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked purposefully back to her command podium, deliberately forgoing her safety harness. It would only be in the way.

"Computer, engage Flagship Mode!" she barked, and the display exploded outward to engulf most of the bridge. Datafeeds began pouring in on all sides as dozens of new icons and glowing flight projections crisscrossed the air around her. "Squadron 105, you're too far out. Come to new heading: 65 by 32 by 96, flank speed. Advance elements, brace for heavy maneuvers on my mark."

Below her she could see Desolas smirking, but she shoved the irritation away. There were more important things to worry about.

"Squadrons 87, 79, and 99, adjust your approach angle by negative thirteen degrees and burn retros. Attack craft, throttle back and let the recon drones take the lead." She smiled with a confidence she didn't feel, her mandibles flaring cockily. "If these aliens want a fight, we'll give them one."


	7. Chapter 7

_Special thanks goes to _sigi87 _and_ Last Ride of the Valkyries _for their technical assistance with this and some other ideas that will pop up later._

_I've also found two errors that I will be addressing in the coming days, one minor and one major. The design of the PA's cruisers has changed to evenly space their retros along their full length, instead of grouping them at the front and rear of the ships. That's minor. The major error is that in ME canon, Ashley Williams was born a year after Shanxi. As I established in Chapter Five that her father isn't even born yet, that's a bit of a problem (which I really should have seen, since I already established that Garrus has been born). So Chapter Five will get a rewrite that I'll post next week, bringing it into line with canon. _

* * *

"Well, so much for that theory," Tlaloc said with a sigh as he watched the alien ships start moving in new patterns. "I'd hoped bringing down their last dreadnought would convince them to give up."

"General Williams says their ground forces are still loading onto their transports," reported the glowing outline that represented Shelly, his aid. Her parents were both dinosaurs, and they'd apparently thought it was a hilarious name for their Human daughter. It's a wonder they hadn't been brought up for child abuse, he decided. "According to the reports they sent, I doubt we can expect the enemy to retreat until all their troops are recovered."

"I don't want them to retreat, I want them to surrender," he replied, his claws scraping across the tile floor as he moved to get a different perspective on the hovering images around them.

He knew he must look ridiculous with the holo-helm clamped over his narrow face, but a virtual reality helmet was a lot easier to build than a huge holotank. Besides, the hold was crowded enough as it was. He was already worried he'd clip one of the other Megas who had assumed their duty stations down here. It didn't matter if you were an admiral, you didn't poke the ship's cook in the ass without consequence. The fact that their cook was an eight meter-long Carnotaurus just made it worse.

"Surrender, sir?"

"They've got some of our people on those ships," he reminded, his eyes narrowing. "I want them back."

"That's going to be hard to do, sir. Williams' has had his people working on a translator for the alien language ever since they invaded, but it's still not ready. How are you going to convince them to surrender if you can't even talk to them?"

"I figured I'd kick their asses for a bit, and then once the fight's been knocked out of them I'd try charades," he remarked with an amused cackle. Seeing the look of confusion on Shelly's face, he sighed. "I'm going to use those graphics Williams used before they blew up our satellites. A picture's worth a thousand words, and so on."

He swung his neck down to examine a formation of enemy frigates and was struck again by how strange it was seeing Shelly at the same height he was. As a Quetzalcoatlus, he was used to towering over anything that wasn't a Mega. Humans like Shelly barely came up to his shoulder, and he had fingers longer than she was tall. But the virtual environment they shared rendered everyone at equal heights. It had to, since images scaled comfortably for a tiny Microraptor would be ridiculously small for a Apatosaurus and vice versa. He was told that he, like most Megas, looked ridiculous shrunk down to the size of a Micro, but in his opinion Micros looked equally comical blown up to match his towering five meter height.

"Now, what have we here?" he remarked, examining a line of small drones that had darted ahead of the incoming alien fighters. "Looks like more recon drones."

"Shall I have the frigates take them out?" Shelly asked, highlighting a trio of the vessels floating near the incoming drones.

"Please do, as soon as they're in range. No one likes a snoop."

A few seconds ticked past, and then the zig-zagging trails of jump missiles shot out of the frigates' missile pods, darting quickly across the distance toward the enemy drones. They broke away, dropping countermeasures and fleeing at high speed. The missiles quickly sorted between their targets and the decoys, closing the distance and downing the drones in tiny splashes of nuclear fire.

The countermeasures and evasive maneuvers worried Tlaloc. The alien commander had to know these drones would be shot down just like the first pair had been. The only reason to send them in ahead of the rest was to test the missiles for weak points. The aliens had already found they could interfere with the targeting of the K-PG missiles by using smaller ships to cast sensor shadows. They weren't stupid and they still had numbers on their side. They could turn this around if he got sloppy.

"Sir, the _Tunguska_ has a shooting solution against one of the alien cruisers. They're requesting permission to use one of K-PG weapons."

"Granted. Tell them they're weapons free for their entire payload."

A few seconds ticked past as Tlaloc waited for his message to be relayed to the distant dreadnought. Tightbeam laser communication suffered from light lag like everything else, and he'd chosen to leave his command cruiser safely hidden in the shadow of Shanxi's moon. It was far enough from the battle that all the data he received was a second or two out of date and his orders took the same time to transmit. The lag was annoying, but the fact that it also kept him far beyond the range of any possible attack more than made up for it. With her stealth armor absorbing any emissions and her thrusters off, the _Ruby_ was almost invisible behind the curve of the moon's surface.

A flash of light heralded the launch of a K-PG missile, and Tlaloc flipped the virtual display back to true scale so he wouldn't have to watch the destruction of the alien cruiser. This whole thing was such a waste. They should be preparing to fight the Architeuthis together, not killing each other over whatever it was that had provoked these aliens to invade. He sighed. The aliens had too much spine for their own good. He'd tried to bluff them into surrender with the decoys, and they hadn't even flinched. Now their heavy elements were scrap and they were still advancing.

"This is new…" he mused, watching as the angled formations of enemy fighters and bombers abruptly swerved and began going back the way they'd come.

For a moment he dared to hope it meant they'd had enough and were retreating, but he rejected that conclusion almost instantly. The frigates and cruisers were still moving forward. The enemy commander had likely just concluded that getting through their missile screen would be impossible.

"Oh, that's what you're up to," said Tlaloc as the alien squadrons started shifting their courses for a third time. "Clever, but it isn't going to save you."

"What isn't?" Shelly asked, trying to see what he was talking about.

"The fighters are linking up with the frigate formations," explained the dinosaur, sweeping a wing forward to point at a cluster of small enemy ships. "They're going to try and shield them behind the frigates' point defense systems."

"Would that work?"

"Not as well as I suspect they're hoping, but better than I'd like," he answered as another enemy cruiser exploded in a prick of simulated fire. The firing time between K-PG shots was much lower than what _Tunguska_ should have been able to pull against such close formations, he noted darkly. The aliens must still be using their frigates to block missile targeting. "If they move in the right patterns, they can force the jump missiles to turn at the last minute. That will make them go slow enough that laser point defense turrets might be able to take out a few before they hit."

"But even if they survive the missiles they'll still have to go past our frigates, and they've got their own lasers."

"I suspect they're hoping that our frigates will be too busy shooting at theirs to worry about simple bombers. They've got more than twice our frigate compliment and their ships are much more durable than ours."

"But we're faster. Couldn't we just hit and run?"

"I firmly intend to do just that, if they'll let me," Tlaloc said, narrowing his eyes at the approaching line of frigates. "I've got a bad feeling about this though."

Seconds ticked past in tense silence, punctuated only by another tiny flare marking the grave of a third alien cruiser. Then a translucent shell appeared around the Alliance fleet, flashing red as frigate after enemy frigate began pouring over the invisible like.

"They're past the point of no return then. All cruisers are weapons free. Mark targets and engage. We're outnumbered here, so tell them to make sure they aren't overlapping their shots."

"Never figured we'd be the ones outnumbered," Shelly remarked with a smile, her hands flashing through the air as she issued his orders. "It's a lot different being on this side of the battle."

"It's a lot different being in battle at all. Our crews have only ever run simulations before," he reminded, opening his toothless beak in a thin smile.

Privately, the fact that none of his ships had seen real action concerned him more than a little. He'd read the reports from Shanxi. The enemy obviously had a very 'by the book' sort of military, which implied that there was a book to go off of. These aliens had obviously figured out interstellar war decades ago, while a significant portion of his crews were old enough to remember when the idea FTL travel had been nothing more than science fiction. The rookies on the ground had done well, but space was a very different arena.

He zoomed back in, just in time to see the lines of _Void Claw_ cruisers begin opening fire. Thin lines highlighted the frigates they had targeted, and Tlaloc was pleased to note that they'd spread their targets out considerably. When the first frigates went down, they'd quickly be able to move to the next ship in the enemy formation.

As the line of shells tore through the empty space that still separated the two fleets, he saw instantly that they didn't have a chance at connecting. The frigates were already starting to scatter. Like his own ships, they were designed for maneuverability. They'd have to get much closer before his cruisers would be able to do more than slow them down.

"Now here's our moment of truth," Tlaloc remarked as the first shots flew harmlessly past the evasive frigates. "They know we can't really hit them at this distance, but we're still close enough to pose something of a threat. So are they going to stay here and form a picket, or will they keep coming?"

The winged alien vessels danced in place a bit more, sliding neatly into nine groups of six. The new formations were much looser than the tight arrows they'd originally used, making sure that each ship had plenty of room to maneuver. Fighters, drones, and bombers trailed behind them in streams, drifting from side to side to confuse incoming missiles. As the new formations completed, they swing in unison to face his fleet again and blasted forward at high speed.

"Damn it. I thought that's what they were when I saw how many of the damn things they brought," he snarled, his huge jaws snapping dangerously. "Tell the cruisers not to let up. Bring those frigates down."

"Sir, they're still way out of range. The odds of us hitting them at this distance-"

"If they aren't zero, they're good enough for me," sighed Tlaloc.

"May I ask why?" Shelly said as she began transmitting the new orders. "It seems like a waste of time."

"It won't when those formations finally hit us. Are you familiar with what a 'wolf pack' is?"

"You mean aside from a literal pack of wolves?" she joked, making the large dinosaur smirk a little. "I remember it's an old-wet navy term, from back in the twentieth century. Something to do with submarines, I think?"

"Precisely. Historically, groups of small vessels like submarines or destroyers have been able to bring down larger ones by getting in close and using weapons like torpedoes to inflict heavy damage. We never brought that tactic to the stellar level because getting that close to an Architeuthis is suicide."

"…but they did. So those frigates are going to get in close and hammer us with some kind of short range weapon?"

"LADAR scans say they've got missile racks. I just needed to know if they were anti-ship or for point defense like ours are. Now we know," Tlaloc said with a nod. "A picket ship wouldn't be interested in getting any closer than it had to."

"Are they going to be an issue?"

"Probably not. They'll most likely go for _Tunguska _first, since she's the most obvious threat. She's got enough redundant systems that they could blow her in half and she'd still be able to fight. With the size of her laser grid and the frigates to help, we'll shred them before they can do much real damage. Still, those things would probably rip through our cruisers like paper, so I'd rather not take any chances. Rearrange our frigate groups to thin _Tunguska's_ screen a bit. I want her to be as tempting a target as possible."

"Aye aye, sir."

As she began transmitting again, he shuffled forward and spun the display to give him a different angle on the battle. There was an enduring myth that Soarers like him made better pilots and admirals because their natural ability to fly made them more three-dimensional thinkers. It wasn't true, of course. Atmospheric flight had about as much in common with space flight as it did with swimming. But Tlaloc had to admit that things usually made more sense to him when viewed from above or below.

His gaze drifted over to a single enemy squadron near the planet that still hadn't moved. It was far beyond the range of even a K-PG missile, and he'd assumed it was left as a rear-guard for the vulnerable transport ships. But as another alien cruiser exploded, he began wondering if the aliens had left it behind to serve as an emergency command post. It wasn't any further from the fight than his ship was, and with the way the aliens had deployed they had no chance of slipping through to take it out. If they had, it showed a remarkable amount of forethought on their part, even if they had known about the K-PG weapons beforehand.

A swirl of motion from his right drew his gaze back to the incoming lines of frigates. Their speed was starting to drop off, and they were now focusing more on dodging than on closing the distance. A twitch of one claw zoomed in on the dancing frigates as the large dinosaur pondered the reason for this sudden change in behavior.

"Perhaps they were pickets after all?" Shelly suggested, noticing where his attention had been drawn. "If their cruisers have shorter range than we estimated, they'd have to move their pickets forward to compensate."

"Maybe. Something still doesn't add up here," Tlaloc mused. He flicked a few of his smaller claws again, and the translucent green sphere flashed into place around his fleet again. "Just as I thought. They aren't setting pickets. They're covering for the cruisers."

A jerk of his head sent the display burring away in a stream of stars, jerking the point of view to a halt near the lines of enemy cruisers. Like the frigates, they had been divided into nine separate groups, with three cruisers to a formation. Initially they had approached in a cautious pincer formation, presumably to allow them to encircle his smaller fleet. The K-PG weapon had put an end to that, and now they were charging forward in a single huge wave. He noted that the forward elements had still held their speed back enough to allow the rear-most vessels to catch up, which was irritating. If they'd charged blindly forward, he could have just had his cruisers focus their fire and destroy them as they came. Now they'd have to split their fire again.

Extending a wing, he spun the view and pulled it back, showing that the alien cruisers were coming dangerously close to the point of no return. Once they crossed it, their own momentum would carry them into the range of his guns, and they'd have no choice but to try and engage. Turning to retreat inside the line would leave them floundering, their much larger broadside profiles completely exposed. They'd be sitting ducks.

"I'm not sure I understand," said Shelly, staring at the alien ships. "Couldn't we just shift to shoot at the cruisers instead of the frigates? We'd probably be able to hit them at much greater distances, since they're less maneuverable."

"By now the enemy's calculated how fast our bullets fly. They know how close they can afford to get before they're at serious risk. That's why the frigates slowed down," he explained. "They're timing it so their cruisers and frigates enter our optimum firing range at the same time. They have enough ships that we won't be able to stop both groups."

"We won't?" she asked, her holographic face now looking somewhat worried.

"Not if we just sit here. Our cruisers have double the range theirs do, but we're outnumbered almost two to one. Not odds I like." Tlaloc flashed another toothless grin. "Which is why we're going to do this instead."

He stretched out a wing and made several sweeping motions. Green lines immediately sprang from their frigates, flying forward to end in malevolent red icons near the enemy wolf packs.

"You're setting the pickets on an intercept trajectory?" Shelly wondered, walking through the virtual constructs to examine them from different angles. "I thought we decided their frigates were built for ship-to-ship engagements. The _Radiant Crest _class was just designed for point defense. If we go up against them, our ships will get torn to bits!"

"Not quite. Our ships are slightly faster, so they only need to get close enough to grab the enemy's attention, and then they can run like hell," he explained. "Their frigates will have to either break off to give chase, leaving their cruisers vulnerable, or ignore us and continue on their present course."

"…where our frigates will be able to slide in behind them and attack while they're distracted," she finished. "It's a good plan, but their lasers are still going to be a problem."

"No they won't. Their commander already made sure of that." He moved the perspective back to the alien frigates and highlighted the squadrons of fighters that still followed them. "They have to protect their attack craft. If we lower the speed on the jump missiles enough to give them something to shoot at, their lasers will already be running hot by the time we get to combat range."

"They're going to figure out something is wrong when they notice that the missiles are moving slower than they were before."

"Hopefully, by the time they do it will be too late. If not, we at least cleared out their fighters."

"Aye, Admiral. I'll calculate the optimum launch range for the frigates."

Another alien cruiser exploded in a flash of light and miniature debris. They were falling faster now. With their frigates preoccupied protecting themselves against his cruisers, the aliens couldn't use their sensor shadow trick any more. _Tunguska _was taking full advantage of this, and as Tlaloc watched another of the winged craft exploded a few seconds later. A brilliant light in the corner of his eye drew his gaze back to the enemy frigates, just in time to see the battered remains of an alien ship be smashed to pieces by a follow-up shot from one of his cruisers.

On the one hand, the fact that they'd finally succeeded in bringing down one of the frigates was quite comforting. The _Void Claw _class had been designed to carry enough ammo to fire continuously for over an hour, but it was good to know they weren't completely wasting their time. On the other hand, the second shot against the disabled frigate hadn't been necessary.

The information his ancestors had been able to collect suggested that Architeuthis were dangerous even when horribly damaged, likely due to their synthetic nature. To counter this, all PA gunnery crews were trained to continue firing until the enemy was confirmed destroyed. But against these weaker ships such tactics were more of a hindrance than a help, Tlaloc realized. Once enough of their critical systems failed, the alien vessels posed no serious threat. The time spent lining up a _coup de gr__â__ce _on a crippled ship could be better spent moving to the next target. Besides, there were humanitarian issues to consider. He wanted no part in the slaughter of helpless sailors, regardless of what planet they came from.

"Shelly, please order the fleet to disregard standard protocols regarding crippled enemy vessels. Provided they pose no immediate threat, lame ducks should be ignored."

She nodded, fingers flashing through the air in a glowing blur. Zooming the display back out, Tlaloc saw his frigates moving forward, abandoning their posts on the edges of the Alliance formation to slice straight toward the approaching aliens. Their blocky appearance belied the freakish speed they were capable of, and the distance was closing rapidly. Another cruiser exploded in the distance, and as if it was a signal the space around his frigates burst outward in a storm of missiles.

They were holding back as he'd ordered, fortunately, but it was still impressive. With active LADAR sweeps and networked info streams, the ships were theoretically capable of alpha-striking their entire payloads in a single unstoppable tide of ordinance. Considering that the fleet's frigate compliment had enough missiles between them to take out fighter swarms ten times the size of what these aliens were bringing, an alpha-strike now would be horrific overkill. Instead, each ship had only launched ten missiles, firing in a rippling wave that would hopefully keep the enemy lasers shooting almost constantly.

Even if it was only a fraction of what they were really capable of, seeing three hundred missiles flashing their way toward the enemy like slow-motion lightning was certainly impressive. He hoped the alien commander would be just as impressed. He needed the enemy off guard, too caught up with trying to stop the sudden wave of missiles that they didn't see the hidden stratagem behind the attack.

It certainly seemed like they were taking the bait. The attack craft scattered the moment the missiles launched, swirling like hornets whose nest had just been kicked. The area around the frigates was abruptly coated in contacts as countermeasures flashed and chaff blisters burst. It appeared the enemy was throwing out everything but the kitchen sink to try and spoof the jump missiles.

Tlaloc was actually impressed. Even if he hadn't ordered the missiles to reduce speed, that level of sensory confusion might have forced them to slow down anyway, just to sort through it. As it stood, the decrease in speed reduced the effectiveness of the enemy decoys and ECM, keeping their impact to a minimum. It didn't matter anyway. The enemy attack craft had been quite careful to keep behind their protective frigates. The moment the jump missiles got close, point defense lasers started viciously slashing them to pieces.

Between their reduced speed, the enemy ECM, and the practiced precision of the alien lasers, a mere handful of jump missiles were able to slip through to bring down their targets. Reviewing the floating datafeeds that hovered in his peripheral vision, the towering Soarer noted that enemy casualties had been limited almost exclusively to harmless recon drones. The alien commander was obviously shepherding his more dangerous craft carefully.

In a normal battle, the massive computers built into his command cruiser would already be plotting the range and arcs of the alien point defense lasers so the second wave of missiles could time their jumps to ensure minimum exposure. He contemplated having Shelly set the jump missiles to maximize their time inside the enemy point defense grid instead, but rejected the idea. Slowing the missiles was dangerous enough. Changing the timing on their jumps would be too much of a coincidence to be believable.

So instead he sat back and watched as a second wave of missiles crashed blindly against the alien defenses. The third wave was already on its way, and a fourth had just cleared the launch tubes. According to his datafeed, there would be time for a total of five salvos before his frigates made contact. Shelly had apparently given orders to gradually increase the number of missiles with each successive salvo, a display of initiative which made Tlaloc preen his bristly feathers in quiet pride. Escalating strikes would not only put more pressure on the enemy lasers, but also serve to allay suspicion about why they hadn't grouped them into a single huge salvo.

Though the enemy frigate groups were now mostly shrouded from view behind a curtain of enlarged explosions and notification icons, Tlaloc was still able to spot an unforeseen fringe benefit the missile barrages were providing. The aliens had apparently formed some sort of point defense block that allowed them to overlap their lasers for maximum effect, but the new formations came with a serious drawback: the blocks were too rigid to allow the small ships to use their full maneuverability. Combined with the decreasing distance, this lack of agility was allowing his cruisers to finally start landing shots on the enemy frigates.

First one ship turned a fraction too late, catching a shell along its bow. The shot crushed its forward section instantly and sent it into a bizarre spiral as the crew frantically tried to regain control. A thousand kilometers away, a second ship overestimated its momentum, sliding straight into the path of a shell that snapped it cleanly in two. A minute later, a ship in the rear of the enemy line took a hit to its stern, blasting its engines apart in an explosion that left the front half of the vessel a gutted wreck.

An alert appeared beside Tlaloc's head, notifying him that _Tunguska _had finally exhausted its supply of K-PG missiles. That was excellent news. With their frigates about to be negated, their heavy ships destroyed, and their cruisers' numerical advantage now almost non-existant, victory was now all but impossible for the alien fleet. The only question was how long it would take them to realize it.

"Our frigates are about to enter engagement range," Shelly reported, waving a hand to display the estimated 'real-time' position of their ships. "Should we order them to break off?"

"Let them do a little damage first," Tlaloc suggested. The final wave of missiles had just hit, so the enemy lasers would be at their weakest. "We want to keep their attention. Hit them just hard enough to let them know we have teeth, and then have our ships scatter."

The virtual display slowly began catching up with the translucent projections, alerts and datapoints flashing here and there to display the results of their final missile strike. All told, the missile waves had been surprisingly effective. Of the six hundred fighters, drones, and bombers the aliens had launched, less than two hundred remained. Thermals scans showed the alien lasers glowing like miniature stars, dwarfed only by the massive blast of their drives. In moments, their cruisers would be in range of _Tunguska _and the rest of his fleet. He had the enemy right where he wanted them.

Below him, the thin line of Alliance frigates made contact with their sleek alien counterparts in a dazzling lightshow of scorching laser blasts. Several of the alien vessels unleashed volleys of seeking torpedoes at the approaching ships, but the slow projectiles were easily cut down. As the tiny shapes dueled, an alert chimed to inform him of the first Alliance casualty of the battle: _Oak_. A pair of enemy frigates managed to catch her between them and scored a lucky hit on her fuel tanks. The subsequent detonation consumed the ship with all hands.

That pattern was beginning to repeat across the battlefield as the hostile ships started clumping together to leverage their last numerical advantage. Though the alien vessels didn't have as many laser emplacements as their Alliance counterparts, they were much more durable. Worse, while their lasers might have been beginning to overheat, they had conventional weapons they could fall back on instead. If his frigates were busy intercepting torpedoes, they couldn't shoot at the alien ships. Outnumbered two to one like this, a direct battle with the alien frigates wouldn't end well.

Just as the first damage alerts began appearing over some of his more heavily engaged ships, the deadly scuffle ended. His frigates spun in place and shot off in a dozen different directions, engines blazing at full burn. Now, the moment of truth. Would the enemy ships follow, or try to attack _Tunguska _while the huge ship was exposed?

To his surprise, they decided to do both. Without missing a beat, the alien formations split, half of them peeling away to chase the frigates while the others suddenly accelerated toward the rest of his fleet. The surviving attack craft slid behind the second group, weaving between their larger brethren for protection.

Staring at the display, Tlaloc suddenly came to a horrific realization. He had fallen for the same trap he had set for the enemy. If he ordered his frigates to intercept the group now heading for the main Alliance fleet, they'd be torn to pieces by the squadrons hunting them. If they turned to engage their pursuers, they'd never make it back in time to stop the second set of frigates. The aliens had completely outmaneuvered him, and in so doing had turned the battle on its head. They were the ones with the advantage now.

Why hadn't he thought that they might split their forces? In retrospect, it was the obvious course of action. They had the numbers to both attack and defend, why wouldn't they use them? Considering how autonomous his own captains were trained to be, he should have expected that the aliens would be capable of similar tactics.

In his heart, he knew why he hadn't expected the maneuver. He was still thinking in terms of the Architeuthis. Simulated war games were common training exercises for Alliance crews, and as a senior officer he'd played as the Achiteuthis many times. As Shelly had mentioned, this battle was somewhat similar to one of those simulations: a weak but numerically superior force against an outnumbered opponent with superior ships. He'd instinctively slipped into the same lines of thought, assuming out of pure habit that the aliens would act like an Alliance commander would against an Achiteuthis fleet. Against the Achiteuthis, the alien commander's decision to split their smaller ships would have been suicide. With their armaments, the aliens would have had to throw all their frigates into one massive wave to do any real damage to one of the Achiteuthis' huge capital ships.

But the aliens weren't fighting an Achiteuthis. Alliance cruisers didn't have the armor of their squid-like dreadnaughts or the flexible firing arcs of their smaller escorts. Against small, agile ships, his forces were extremely vulnerable. For all her size, even _Tunguska _still couldn't attack multiple ships at once like an Achiteuthis could. She could be overwhelmed.

Which was precisely what the aliens intended, Tlaloc realized. Their frigates weren't going to attack _Tunguska_ at all. It was too big to easily damage and wasn't an immediate threat. No, they'd go for his cruisers first. Once they had been destroyed, then they'd turn to take out the dreadnaught, attacking from every angle at once to drown her in bullets.

It would work, too. _Void Claw _cruisers had almost no armor or point defense lasers, so they'd be sitting ducks if the frigates could get in close. He'd practically told the aliens as much when he'd left a corridor open for them to attack _Tunguska_. It was intended as a trap, but to them it probably looked like he was rerouting ships to protect his cruisers. Without realizing it, he'd managed exposed a vulnerability he hadn't even known he'd had.

"We've made a mistake," he announced, his eyes narrowing. "Order our cruisers to scatter and fall back toward Rally Point Alpha, firing as they go. _Tunguska _is to advance toward the enemy at full burn, with orders to pursue and engage at will."

"Sir, with the cruisers falling back, advancing will leave her completely exposed," Shelly warned.

"_Tunguska's _not their target. Even if she was, I'd rather they shoot her than the rest of the fleet. Have the frigates continue scattering, but arc their trajectories to bring them back toward the cruisers. We won't be able to intercept the enemy's second group, but hopefully they'll get back in time to help fight it off. Tell the cruisers to continue focusing their fire on the frigates going after them. We'll need to take out as many as we can before they get close. Have them start focusing their fire, three ships to each target."

"That's a lot of firepower for such small ships, admiral."

"We don't need it for the firepower, we need it for the accuracy. Spreading out our fire isn't working. It's too easy to dodge, and our gunners aren't trained for it. This way, the enemy ships will have three times as many shots to try dodging."

"Aye, sir. I'll send the order."

"There's more. We're through messing around with their attack craft. Upload the data for the enemy's laser grids, ramp our missiles back up to their full speed, and have every ship in range fire a fifty missile barrage. Prioritize their bombers. I want them gone."

"Got it."

Tlaloc's eyes narrowed as he watched the screen. The alien frigates that pursued his fleeing pickets were actually outnumbered, but they still moved in coherent formations, using coordination to make up for their slightly lower speed. It was obvious that they were trying to cut his ships off and keep them from rejoining the rest of the Alliance fleet. Beyond them, the enemy cruiser formations were now within range of his ships, but with his own cruisers occupied trying to hold back the rapidly closing frigates, only _Tunguska _was free to engage them.

And engage them she did. The dreadnought's accelerator cannons, each a kilometer long and arrayed laterally through its wide hull, were roaring silently in the darkness of space, spewing a rolling wave of lethal shells at its distant targets. The aliens were obviously aware of how deadly such a barrage would be, and had apparently already taken steps. As she began firing, the enemy formations broke around _Tunguska_ like water against a rock, peeling away to try and keep out of her range. The huge ship slid forward to pursue, but the alien cruisers were too fast, always dancing just out of her reach.

That too was likely part of the enemy's plan, Tlaloc suspected, keeping the slower dreadnought too occupied chasing shadows to do any serious damage. That was fine by him. If they were busy keeping out of her reach they couldn't attack his other ships, and her threat radius was high enough that she'd almost be more effective at disrupting the enemy than she was at hurting them.

He shifted the perspective on the display with a tap of a claw, peering carefully down at the line of alien cruiser formations slowly creeping toward his fleet. Even though his cruisers were dispersing, they weren't going to be able to spread and fall back in time to out-distance the enemy ships, not if they wanted to shoot while they did it. Once the alien frigates made contact, the gap between the two lines would close even faster.

Straightening, he swept a wing slowly across the virtual battlefield, carefully selecting a path for _Tunguska _to follow. If the alien commander was even half alive, he'd be able to keep his cruisers out of her range, but the time spent maneuvering would be time they wouldn't be able to use to attack his ships. Above all else, he had to buy more time.

"Have _Tunguska _follow this course, and keep her shooting at anything dumb enough to get inside her range," Tlaloc ordered calmly. "Let's keep them on their toes."

In the distance, the display flared as hundreds of jump missiles flashed toward the departing enemy frigates. Several of his ships weren't even in launch range anymore, but the huge blasts dropped by those that were would likely be more than enough. The dispersal of his own pickets prevented the various missile swarms from coordinating into a single overwhelming cloud as they had done before, but the increased speed and intelligence of the weapons more than made up for that deficiency.

Instead of blindly stumbling into the enemy's laser grid, the missiles blasted through thousands of kilometers like bullets to close the distance before slowing and turning just outside the enemy's laser range. Once the missiles acquired their targets again, they shot into the center of the alien formations faster than their lasers could track, exploding in a spheres of nuclear fire where the missiles' guidance computers thought their targets should be. Sometimes the alien ships got lucky and dodged at the last moment. A fighter or bomber swerved left when the computer thought it would go right. Sometimes it was their lasers that were fortunate, sweeping their lethal beams into the path of an incoming missile almost by chance. But for every projectile the enemy dodged or intercepted, two more hit their marks. By the time the fifth and sixth wave of missiles stabbed into the enemy formation, there was barely anything left to attack.

Though their current formation was much more fluid than their earlier point defense blocks had been, the decreasing distance was now giving the alien ships less and less time to react. As ordered, his cruisers had begun combining their fire, bracketing the enemy between their shots. Dodging the first shell put the enemy in the path of the second, which put them in the path of the third, and so on. It was a lethal dance that had only two outcomes: either the target would break off, or it would be destroyed.

One by one, their pilots began to make mistakes, dodging a moment too late or pushing their ships beyond what they could handle. The glowing lights of the alien formation slowly started to fill with burning comets as the heavy Alliance guns took their toll, but still the frigates came on.

Tlaloc sighed. His crews were performing perfectly, even better than he could have hoped, but it was like swatting flies with a sledgehammer. The huge spinal guns on his cruisers were just too big and fired too slowly. They could reduce half the enemy frigates to space dust, but by then the rest would be too close for such unwieldy weapons to make any difference. They needed their escorts.

With another wave, he moved the view to follow the twisting trails of his frigates. They were operating independently now, as they'd been trained to do, arcing and sliding their way back toward their fleeing charges. As predicted, the enemy seemed determined to stop them.

While his ships had spread out, theirs had consolidated into hunting pairs. The huge distances involved in space combat meant that they couldn't possibly intercept all of his ships, and they didn't seem interested in trying. Instead, each pair selected one of the Alliance frigates and ignored the others in favor of stalking their chosen target with methodical precision. It was a tactic they'd obviously used before, and coordinated movements of the hunting pairs seemed to perfectly-designed to cancel the speed and agility of his ships. This left him in an uncomfortable position.

He could order the frigates that hadn't been intercepted to continue onward to assist the cruisers. This might preserve more of his heavy ships, but it would be at the cost of his escorts. Outnumbered two to one, those left behind would have no chance against the enemy hunters, which would undoubtedly come after the rest of his ships once they finished here. But if he ordered the frigates to turn and support their comrades, the cruisers would be defenseless. With a click of his beak and a disgruntled ruffle of feathers, he made his choice.

"All frigates are to cease evasive maneuvers and engage the enemy. Stack up, one for one, and stay close. Don't give their lasers a chance to cool," he instructed. "Vessels that become critically damaged are cleared to alpha strike their remaining ordinance against the nearest enemy ship. It likely won't do any good, but maybe we'll get lucky. Have Navigation start working on new jump coordinates for our fleet."

"We're abandoning the planet?" Shelly asked, surprised.

"No, but this deployment's FUBAR. In about a minute the whole battle is going to turn into a meat grinder, one we can't afford. So I want the frigates and cruisers out of here. Let them think we're retreating. _Tunguska _will stay here and spike its core emissions to make it seem like her drives need time to charge. With luck the aliens will go after her instead of pursuing our ships, but if they don't we'll lead them on a merry chase while shesecures Shanxi and resupplies."

"And if they do go for _Tunguska_? She's not going to be able to take on so many ships at once. It'll be like those horrid bullfights people used to watch."

"I have no intention of letting it get that far. We just need some distance, so the fleet will only be going far enough to fool the enemy into thinking we're leaving. Then we can bring them back in and smash their fleet between _Tunguska _and our cruisers. With light lag, by the time they see us turn around we'll already be back in the system."

"Aye aye, Admiral. Setting jump coordinates for five light minutes out. We should be receiving the data from the fleet's pathing lasers in just a few seconds."

"Thank you. Notify me once the calculations are complete."

Tlaloc frowned and turned his long head to glance at the holographic ships hovering just behind his shoulder. The sight of frigates dueling against one another had never been something he'd ever thought he'd see, and the ethereal elegance of the rolling battle caught him off-guard for a moment. His parents had shown him films of Human dogfights, with daring pilots frantically spinning through the air to get behind one another. This wasn't even close to those old vids.

Instead of trying to slide behind their opponents, the swirling ships seemed to be trying to maneuver to wherever their enemy's laser coverage was weakest. Frigates corkscrewed and rolled through the stars, simultaneously trying to orient toward their opponents' hottest lasers while lining up the freshest of their own guns. In addition to trying to pull their lasers into position, the alien vessels also continually tried to line their bows up with any nearby Alliance ships, unleashing storms of torpedoes as close as they possibly could. Most of his ships simply intercepted them with their powerful laser grids, but as he watched he saw one scarred frigate, _Poppy_, unleash a barrage of jump missiles that flashed forward to take out a wave torpedoes with surgical precision.

Pulling up the information for _Poppy_, he noted that its primary bridge had already been destroyed, slashed open by the same laser strike that had mangled its dorsal section. Most of its command staff was dead, and the ship was now being controlled from the secondary bridge by Lieutenant Commander Dexileth, an Allosaurus. The gunner who had programmed in the clever trick with the missiles was Ensign Shepard, who had apparently been forced into the post when the first gunnery officer had been killed.

Shepard's trick appeared to be catching on as more and more of Alliance frigates followed _Poppy's_ example and began using their jump missiles for point defense. They weren't nearly as effective as lasers, but even a few less targets to shoot at gave their weapons some much-needed rest.

Even with this new trick, the casualty count was already much higher than Tlaloc would have liked. His frigates simply weren't designed to fight engagements where the enemy could shoot back, and their lack of armor made them extremely vulnerable. As he watched, another went down, cut in half by a pair of alien lasers.

They were still giving as good as they got. The advantage provided by the heavy armor of the enemy vessels was quickly negated by the sheer number of lasers the Alliance frigates could bring to bear. Their targeting computers made sure every laser focused on the same point, melting the alien metal like wax. Just in front of his long nose, Tlaloc saw one of his ships shoot past an enemy frigate in a high-speed pass, four lasers firing together to peel its spine open in a spray of molten armor.

An alert sounded in his ear, causing the large dinosaur to flick the display back to his cruisers. The wolf packs were almost on top of them now, far too close for their guns to be of any use. On some unknown signal, the alien frigates broke from their formations and peeled away, each racing after one of his cruisers with unerring precision.

With a twist of one claw, he issued orders for the scattered vessels to shift their fire toward the approaching enemy cruisers. Trying to line up a bow shot on the agile frigates at point blank range was a doomed endeavor, no matter how mobile his cruisers might be. Surviving long enough to make the FTL jump was more important than inflicting damage now, but the alien cruisers were as exposed as they'd likely ever be. If any of them could manage to get a clean shot, they might as well take it.

The frigates were close now, and Tlaloc had a perfect view of just how effective the small vessels could be when they were finally in their element. His cruisers were agile, almost impossibly so considering their huge length. The rows of thrusters that ran across their hulls were blazing in glowing lines of fire, throwing them across the sky like leaves in a hurricane, but against the alien frigates it made no difference. Unlike the Achiteuthis ships the cruisers had been designed to fight, their new opponents could not only keep up with the evasive dance, but stay a step ahead of it. No matter how the larger ships spun or swerved, the aliens moved to cut them off, with every turn bringing them just a few kilometers closer.

They waited until they were just a handful of kilometers away from their targets before finally opening fire. The calliope-designs of the enemy torpedo racks rippled in waves of glowing blue fire as they unleashed dozens of glowing bolts at almost point-blank range. Though they had never trained against guided weapons like these, Tlaloc noted with some pride that his captains reacted instantly and intelligently, throwing their ships away from the approaching missiles to buy more time for their defense grids to intercept the projectiles.

The lasers needed all the advantages they could get. Each cruiser only mounted two, one on their dorsal section and one on their ventral. Even that measly level of protection was only included as an afterthought, without any serious expectation that the weapons would ever be used. Now they were all that stood between his ships and a fiery end.

Tlaloc's eyes narrowed as the same scene repeated itself a dozen times over, scattered across over a thousand kilometers of empty space. An enemy frigate would swoop past a cruiser and unleash a lethal hail of torpedoes. The huge ship would flash its retros, throwing it sideways through space as it frantically attempted to stop the swarm of projectiles. Most times, they were successful. Sometimes they weren't.

_Jaguar _was the first to fall. Her overworked lasers missed a single torpedo, which plowed straight through its weak barriers to impact directly against one of her maneuvering thrusters. By the time the emergency cutoffs engaged, the resulting chain reaction had already made its way to _Jaguar's_ central fuel line. There was no warning, no time to evacuate. It simply exploded in a titanic blast that ripped the entire cruiser into a thousand pieces of drifting molten slag.

While she was the only ship destroyed, several others had taken hits to less critical locations. Three other ships were reporting damage, and two of those three had apparently taken severe damage. _Elk _had lost all of her starboard retros when one of her fuel lines was severed by debris, and _Cardinal's _main gun had been warped almost a centimeter out of alignment. It was a miracle the weapon hadn't deformed enough to tear the ship completely apart. This unexpected twist of good fortune came as cold comfort, however. The enemy frigates were already coming around for a second pass. As the cruisers' lasers started to overheat their chances of interception grew smaller and smaller, and _Jaguar _had already proven that even one torpedo was too many to let through.

Though their fate was largely sealed now, the Alliance ships gamely kept up the fight. Even as they flipped and twirled to buy themselves a few more precious seconds, many still found the time to spin their bows toward the distant enemy cruisers and fire a few parting shots before darting away again. Firing on the run was what they had been trained for, after all, and it seemed that exactly what they were running from made little difference to most of his captains.

The aliens hadn't expected this, Tlaloc noted with satisfaction. Presumably they thought the cruisers would try futilely to use their guns against the frigates in a frantic attempt to save themselves. He fluffed his feathers in dark amusement. It seemed that now it was the enemy's turn to make foolish assumptions. Self-preservation was a luxury the Alliance Navy could never afford, and his sailors knew it. So long as more was gained than sacrificed, death held no terror for them.

More focused on evading the guns of _Tunguska _than they were on the other embattled Alliance vessels, the alien cruisers were slow to react to the incoming shells. Their sluggishness cost them dearly. Sturdier than the frigates, Tlaloc knew it would take more than one hit to bring these ships down. But so did his squadron leaders. The shots from his ships had been focused and precise. Though they maneuvered independently, they fired together.

A nod of his head enlarged one of the enemy cruiser formations, just in time to show the first hit bring down the lead cruiser's barriers in a flash of light. A second shot, fired by a completely different ship, smashed into its underside seconds later, blasting a twisted hole in the ship's belly seventy meters across. The third shot missed, but according to his display, a fourth was already on the way.

Even as the alien frigates got close enough to launch their second wave of torpedoes, ending four of his cruisers in fireballs or silent screams of ruptured metal, the icons for the enemy cruisers also began winking out. Spines snapped, engines exploded, and hulls were shredded as the Alliance ships finally entered into their own. As the cruisers shifted to focus on the new threat and start returning fire, someone made another mistake. One of the squadrons baiting _Tunguska _was slightly too slow, forced off its planned course by a series of shots from his cruisers. Seeing her moment, the huge dreadnought pounced.

She targeted the center of the alien formation, her six cannons vomiting a rippling stream of death into the stars. Though the alien pilot was alert enough to swerve out of the way of her first and second shots, the third brought down the ship's barriers. The forth went wide, but the fifth collided with the vessel's starboard wing. The impact not only severed the wing, but twisted the cruiser even further off course. Before the crew could correct, the seventh shot hit, blowing a huge hole in its bow. The eighth shot collapsed several bulkheads, crushing a two hundred meter section of the ship like a can under a Thunderer's heel. The ninth shot blew the alien vessel clean in half. The whole thing was over in just seven and a half seconds.

Of the two remaining ships in that formation, the farthest had already fled beyond where _Tunguska _would have had a reasonable hope of destroying it. But the nearest was still in range, its thrusters firing as hard as they could to escape her reach. It was a doomed effort. The cruiser's narrow stern profile allowed it to dodge the first four shots, but the fifth obliterated its barriers in a crackle of energy. The ninth connected with its engines, consuming the entire aft section in a horrific chain reaction. The titanic dreadnought left the cruiser's burnt remains alone, turning her attention toward a different squadron, which was now noticeably giving the huge vessel a wider birth.

"Jumps plotted and sent," Shelly called from somewhere behind him, her voice triumphant. "Allied ships should be departing the system…now."

Zooming the display out again, Tlaloc patiently waited for it to catch up with the lag. A few seconds later, the floating holograms of the dozens of Alliance vessels still in the system froze, then blasted forward at extreme speed until they left the display's field of view. The ships had flown off in all directions, but their paths would curve and eventually intersect at the rendezvous point Shelly had selected for them. The sudden dispersal was just another smokescreen to discourage pursuit. It wouldn't be nearly as effective against these aliens, who actually had the numbers to chase them, but with luck _Tunguska's _presence would serve as enough of a deterrent to keep the enemy in the system.

"How many did we lose?" he asked, carefully surveying the scattered enemy ships. They were milling around in confusion, which was to be expected. Though pursuit calculations were much simpler than those required for a jump like his ships had just done, he still wouldn't know if they had taken the bait for another minute or so.

"All told, we've got seventeen frigates and nine cruisers out of action," Shelly supplied, her voice grim. "Of those, two frigates and three cruisers are just disabled. The crews have already evacuated, but if the aliens don't finish them off we can probably drag them back to drydock and have them patched up in a month or two."

"Damn it all. They took out almost half our fleet?"

"They didn't do any better than we did, sir. Worse, actually. We took out both their dreadnoughts, fourteen cruisers, and thirty eight of their frigates. We also shot down almost all of their drones and attack craft. I think a few broke off for repairs before we brought the hammer down, but even the best estimates suggest ninety percent casualties."

"God, what a waste," he sighed, shaking his huge head. "So many dead, and for what? This whole thing is just so pointless."

"From what I understand, sir, war usually is."

"I just wish our new guests felt that way," muttered the dinosaur before returning his attention to the drifting holograms of the alien fleet. "Their window is up. If they haven't chased our smaller ships yet, they aren't going to. Have _Tunguska _come to a new heading thirty degrees off Rally Point Gamma and clear for heavy action. This next part is-what in the hell are they doing now?"

His feathers rippled in surprise as instead of attacking like he had predicted, the enemy ships began to disperse, swerving away to gradually loop back toward Shanxi. This was extremely bizarre. He supposed the aliens might just be trying to be merciful, but that didn't track. Even if they expected his force to take hours or days regrouping, they had to know it could still fight. An invader would want to destroy as many of his ships as they could, to prevent them from being used in battle later on. Considering that the aliens had barely scraped a draw despite having a major numerical advantage, letting his entire force freely disengage was strategic insanity. What were they up to?

"Admiral, _Tunguska _just received an infographic from the alien fleet," Shelly announced, her tone perplexed. "I think you'll want to see this."

A virtual window appeared in the air before Tlaloc's face, and after a moment's pause began playing the alien transmission. He'd watched the video exchanges General Williams had traded with the invaders when they first arrived, so the crude images came as no surprise. The content of the message, however, came as a bit of a shock.

The video began with a rendering of a debris field, with bits of destroyed alien and Alliance vessels clearly visible in the wreckage. Glowing silhouettes abruptly appeared in the debris, spikey red figures shaped vaguely like the aliens, and a jumble of Human and dinosaur forms rendered in green. Beside the silhouettes a handful of other shapes popped into existence, triangular red capsules and green pods that bore a very strong resemblance to the older cryo-boats _Comet Alpha_ had been carrying when she had been destroyed.

After a few seconds where the red and green shapes drifted silently, the video zoomed out, showing a red alien cruiser hovering on one side of the debris field, with a green image of _Tunguska_ waiting on the other side of the field. The huge dreadnought was noticeably not rendered to scale. The colors of the ships suddenly changed, both vessels turning pure white and rotating so they no longer faced each other.

The floating figures and pods immediately began moving, the red alien shapes sliding smoothly toward the enemy cruiser while the green ones were sucked toward _Tunguska_. Once all the drifting figures had been removed, the alien ship turned and flew away, leaving the dreadnought behind. The debris field vanished, replaced by a crude map of Shanxi's local orbit. Red triangles showed the locations of the various alien ships, and a huge green triangle marked _Tunguska's _position.

The red icons began moving, milling around in areas where the fighting had been thickest before setting course back for Shanxi. A thin red circle appeared, radiating out from the clustered group of alien transports that still hovered near the planet. Some hasty mental math told him the circle likely stretched at least a full light second. He smirked. _Tunguska _must really have spooked them if they thought their transports needed that much space to be safe.

"Sir, does this mean what I think it does?" asked Shelly, her expression hopeful.

"They're letting us recover our escape pods," he confirmed with a nod. "They want a truce."

"Should I start preparing our own video?"

"Don't bother. As long as we don't make any aggressive moves, they won't shoot at us. By now, they've likely recovered almost all of the troops they had on the planet. Once they've collected their sailors and destroyed their wrecks so we can't pick through them, they'll leave the system. There's nothing left for them here."

"_Tunguska _isn't equipped for recovery duty," she reminded, her hands flashing through the air to highlight the dozens and dozens of beacons that marked their drifting lifeboats. "Should I try to rig something?"

"No. By the time we came up with anything useful, the rest of the fleet will have returned and we won't need it. Best just to keep her broadside facing the enemy and just wait."

"I guess that's it then." Her glowing face went pensive for a moment. "Sir, if they're retreating, that means we won, right?"

"Yes, lieutenant, that's usually what it means," he answered, smiling his strange bird-smile.

"But I saw the videos of wars on Earth, before the dinosaurs came and we stopped fighting each other. Everyone was always so happy when they won. They had parades and they kissed and… Sir, I don't feel happy. I just feel empty."

"So do I," he confessed with a sigh, hanging his huge head. "But I'm afraid that we'll all start getting used to it before long. Signal _Tunguska_. I need to send a message."

"Aye aye. I'll bring up some of the icons we used for previous videos."

"Not that kind of message. I want to send a live audio and video transmission to the alien fleet."

"Sir, I doubt they'll be able to understand you. If we haven't been able to translate their language yet, they probably haven't been able to translate ours."

"It doesn't matter. The message isn't for them."

He straightened to his full impressive height and stretched out his wings, flapping experimentally. The wind blew Shelly's holographic hair back like she'd just stepped into a gale, and a few muffled cries suggested his display had disturbed a few of the other Megas nearby. Ignoring them (rank had its privileges, after all), he settled into a professional stance and unclipped his holo-helm. Taking a deep breath, he nodded toward Shelly, who pressed something he could no longer see, activating the recording.

"To all individuals who have been taken captive by the unknown alien invaders, this is Admiral Tlaloc. I have a message for you. Shanxi stands strong, and we are in the process of securing her orbit as the enemy withdraws. The Alliance was victorious. Your sacrifices were not in vain. But we have not forgotten you."

He unfurled his wings to their full expanse, ten meters wide. This time, no one complained as he angrily flapped and settled into an aggressive stance, his beak snapping viciously.

"Until every last one of you is returned, there will be no peace, no rest. We will never stop looking for you. There is nowhere these aliens can take you that we won't follow, no fortress we will not siege. I will personally tear apart this galaxy star by star if that is what it takes. So as sector commander, I give formally give you these orders: sit tight. Stay strong. We're coming for you."


End file.
